Visual Merchandising (SaaS)

Agency: blubolt

SaaS platform: bluCommerce

Skills: UX

Introduction

Visual merchandising is a key strategy employed by eCommerce retailers to drive conversion across their sites. On product listing pages, users typically interact with the higher portions of the page and earlier listed items. Following significant interest from clients, the existing bluCommerce Visual Merchandising tool was targeted for improvement. bluCommerce is a eCommerce SaaS platform.

Aims

• Do not loose any existing functionality.

• Create browser-based access.

• Enable visual merchandising to be undertaken on existing site pages so that a clear representation of work undertaken alongside page adverts and filtering can be viewed.

Approach

Surveys were sent out to clients to determine what features were of most value. Data was collated, assessed by myself, the Product Owner and Product Architect to determine what was required for a minimal viable product (MVP) and what was technically achievable. I created wireframes to be shared with the wider team alongside user stories and confirmations for deeper analysis. Iterations were undertaken until all technical aspects and UI placement was agreed upon. UI was based on existing components. Post build the tool was beta tested with users, iterated upon and then deployed for use with all the bluCommerce client base.

Solution

Due to timescale and resource requirements, the need for a two step process was identified. Phase 1 of the browser-based Visual Merchandising feature for the bluCommerce platform was successfully launched in early 2020.

Phase 1

• Browser-based access to Visual Merchandising tool.

• Live page view of products, adverts and stickers

• Ability to import/export CSV data

• Ability to drag and drop individual products

Client feedback has been positive.

Drag and drop works perfectly – helps us restructure the more structured pages like detail product categories (skimmers etc.) where we can adjust a lot more on the fly.

KitchenCraft

Being able to import a list of SKUs to define order is helpful, will save time and allow us to be more data driven.

Route One