Increasing product sales 32% by enhancing product discovery
Overview
An healthcare labels provider faced slowing sales in a $1.3 million product line due to poor product discoverability. To address this, we redesigned the homepage and top-level category pages, moving the search bar to a more prominent location for easier navigation. Additionally, we introduced a featured section dedicated to the struggling product line, ensuring greater visibility. These improvements led to a 32% increase in sales for the targeted product line.
Challenge
The homepage’s visually overwhelming hero section diverted attention from key products, making them difficult to find. Additionally, ineffective search functionality returned irrelevant results, frustrating users trying to locate specific items.
At checkout, an issue caused multiple "Ship To/Bill To" fields to generate, creating confusion and friction at a critical moment in the purchasing process.
Before: User were experiencing choice overload when visiting the Home page.
After: Streamlined hero section provides distinct pathways for users to shop.
Approach
1. Research & Pain Point Analysis
To quickly assess the most critical usability challenges, we leveraged stakeholder insights, design evaluations, and behavioral analytics rather than conducting traditional usability testing. Our goal was to identify friction points efficiently and implement improvements on a short timeline.
Conducted stakeholder interviews and workshops to gather insights from internal teams on purchasing behaviors and user frustrations.
Performed a design review, identifying usability issues in navigation, search, and checkout flows.
Analyzed heat maps and site analytics to uncover drop-off points, confirming that the visually overwhelming hero section and ineffective search results were major pain points.
2. Navigation, Search & Homepage Optimization
Based on our findings, we focused on improving product discoverability by refining search functionality, homepage layout, and category structure. These updates helped users find relevant products faster while ensuring better visibility for key offerings.
Redesigned the homepage to reduce visual clutter, ensuring key product categories and the struggling $1.3 million product line were more prominent.
Moved the search bar to a more visible location and refined search algorithms to return more relevant results based on common user queries.
Implemented a clearer category structure to streamline product browsing and improve findability.
3. Checkout Usability Enhancements
A complicated checkout experience can significantly impact conversions. Our analysis revealed friction caused by multiple "Ship To/Bill To" fields, leading to confusion and unnecessary delays in order completion. We optimized the process to remove roadblocks and improve the user experience at a critical touchpoint.
Identified and resolved an issue causing multiple "Ship To/Bill To" fields to generate at checkout, reducing confusion and purchase friction.
Simplified the checkout process, ensuring a more intuitive form layout and fewer barriers to purchase.
Outcome
Our strategic homepage, search, and checkout optimizations resulted in a significantly improved user experience and measurable business impact.
Product discoverability improved, with users engaging more frequently with the previously underperforming $1.3 million product line.
Sales for the targeted product line increased by 32%, demonstrating the effectiveness of enhanced navigation and search functionality.
Checkout completion rates improved, as resolving the "Ship To/Bill To" issue reduced friction and streamlined the purchase process.
Users found products more efficiently, thanks to the prominently placed search bar and redesigned category structure.
By making data-informed UX improvements within a short timeline, we successfully enhanced usability, customer engagement, and business performance.
Key Takeaways
Fast research, big impact – Even with a limited budget and tight timeline, leveraging stakeholder interviews, analytics, and design reviews provided valuable insights that informed high-impact UX improvements.
Prioritizing product visibility improves engagement – Reducing visual clutter on the homepage and creating a dedicated feature section helped underperforming products gain more traction.
Optimized search improves discoverability – Placing the search bar in a more prominent location and refining search logic ensured users found what they needed faster.