Snakes at Sunset

Overview

A responsive web concept design for an ecommerce store.

Problem Statement
While Snakes at Sunset has an extensive inventory of animals, supplies, and feeders, their customers have difficulty navigating their website due to poor IA and layout.

Solution Statement
Redesign the website facilitates usability by creating better hierarchies and clearer descriptions of products and reviews.

My Role
Researcher and Designer

Tools
InVision
Sketch
Whimsical
Zeplin

Research

Snakes At Sunset is a retailer of reptiles and amphibians, supplies, and feeders. They are located in Miami, FL. In addition to their brick and mortar store, they also have a website where customers can access their inventory.
Initial research of the website; Website has inconsistent colors, a small, grainy logo as well as small, grainy icons and texts for their products. It was hard to navigate and to read item listing. Photos and descriptions of animals and items were small and hard to read.

From reviews;I found out that more novice reptile enthusiast wanted easier access to care sheets and books as well as kits, instead of having to scope out entire websites for information and individual supplies.
Familiar and experienced enthusiast, or breeders, wanted better access to new hatchlings and morphs (genetics).

Reviews of Snakes at Sunset were overwhelmingly negative; most in part due to their terrible service. While building a new website would not help with that, it would help to bring in business. One of the common negative reviews was about ordering an animal only to be alerted after paying that it had been sold in-store, thus I added a In-Stock alert for each animal/product.

There were also redundancies and repetitions of certain animals based out of sex, so I created an option to choose there sex of the animal in the PDP: This will streamline their inventory.

It was difficult to find information on Snakes at Sunset, such as their phone number, email, and the location of the store. Adding it to the footer makes it present at any page.

Competitive Analysis

XYZ Reptiles and Scales n’ Tales.
From these reptile and pet stores, I was able to pull information on categories, listings, payment options, checkouts, and accounts.

Design Inspiration
While delving into competitive analysis, I also drew inspiration. One source in particular was FOXBLOOD.

Personas and User Flows

From Research, I divided users into two categories; Novice and Expert.
Novice users have little-to-no knowledge and/or experience with reptiles and amphibians. Adversely, Expert user have a wealth of knowledge on reptiles and amphibians, along with their health and care.
Therefore, it was important to create personas with varying experience.

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes

Iterations and Refinements

• Cohesive colors and textstyles, forgoing logo and any original branding materials.

• Larger, clearer photos of animals, feeders, and supplies.

• In-stock alerts for items.

• Sex options for animals.

• Condensing information types into clear boxes.

Hi-Fidelity Mobile Screens

Zeplin Style Guide

Next Steps

To further improve the design and function of Snakes at Sunset’s e-commerce page I would like to…

• Conduct Interviews with Stakeholders and Users

• Research Google Analytics for their current website

• Create a Sitemap to help with the IA of their page and inventory