Building a multi-brand, standards-based design system for 14 international footwear brands.
Project Summary
Wolverine Worldwide owns a portfolio of international footwear and apparel brands that collectively generate over $2.5 Billion in annual revenue. When the shared e-commerce platform was launched, brand websites were simple and aligned, but as brands evolved, the platform became burdened with complexities and technical debt. This project summarizes a multi-phase, e-commerce platform redesign that realigned the brands to a shared set of templates powered by a standards-based design system that helped achieve the following results:
Aligned 14 websites to a shared set of agnostic templates
Delivered countless workflow efficiencies and platform performance improvements
Increased creative flexibility for content creators while also increasing standardization
Laid the foundation for a global UX and Conversion Rate Optimization practice that generated an additional 10 million dollars of measurable revenue increases over a 12-month period
Provided brands an opportunity to refresh their digital presence
Improved user experience KPIs for internal and external users
My Role:
UX Design Lead
Qualitative & Quantitative Research
Design System Lead
UX-Brand Designer Liaison
Replacing The Sole Of A Wickedly Complicated System
Problem Summary
Wolverine's direct-to-consumer e-commerce business was exploding, but its success came with many challenges. As brands raced to meet user needs and market demand, their websites were stretched, tweaked, and customized until the underlying platform was saturated with complications and technical debt. Platform performance was poor, updates and improvements were slow, and valuable ideas and opportunities were not being realized. Both internal and external user experiences were suffering... it was time for a reBOOT.
In The Words Of Ken Carbone: Unify, Simplify, Amplify.
Opportunity
Implementing a standards-based design system would deliver countless efficiencies across the shared platform. In addition to improving site performance and ease of maintenance, standards would also help optimize all the upstream processes used to create content, prep products, handle orders, and service end users needs. Everything from how products were photographed and named, to how distribution centers handled shipping and returns… Everything is connected to the e-commerce platform.
The opportunities tied to this project were enormous, but selling "standardization and compliance" to our creative brand partners and designers was not going to be easy. To get everyone paddling in the same direction, we needed to communicate the value of this work clearly and collaborate with brands to understand and, ultimately, deliver a solution that met THEIR needs.
"Solutions" that didn't strike a balance between standardization and creative flexibility would not be considered.
Solving Problems With Research, Communication, and Collaboration
Solution
To help stakeholders align on mutually beneficial project goals, I created a multi-point research plan that leveraged surveys, moderated and unmoderated interviews, workshops, and quantitative user data to extract and understand pain points and desired functionality. I also conducted site audits to learn why and where deviations occurred most frequently.
The design phase used key research insights to produce brand-agnostic templates with strategic improvements in key areas that empowered brands to flex their templates and creativity while remaining design system compliant.
Finally, our team created a rollout plan that gave each brand the opportunity to complete a full brand/website refresh of core elements (typography, colors, and iconography) during their migration. After running a pilot project with one of our smaller brands, we ironed out the kinks and applied the system to the entire portfolio.
How Strategic Standardization Empowered Change
Outcome Spotlight
Shortly after completing this project, we were able to ramp up our Conversion Rate Optimization practice by spreading our quantitative testing efforts (A/B, multi-variant, and URL redirect testing) across the portfolio. Because our sites now shared the standards-based design system, when winning tests were identified, we could automatically style and immediately inject their improvements into every website on the platform.
This proved to be a massive win; In the 12 months following this work, our Conversion Rate Optimization team conducted 50+ hypothesis-based experiments that delivered an additional 10 million dollars in revenue!