An e-commerce hub connecting shoppers and small business owners with their local communities.
Product
E-Commerce Web App
Role
UX Researcher, UX Designer
Tools
Figma, Notion, Zoom
El Locale is an e-commerce platform designed to connect local businesses with customers through a seamless online shopping experience.
Overview
El Locale is gearing up to launch its first e-commerce website, designed to empower local businesses by connecting them directly with customers. Focused on fostering community and supporting small enterprises, the platform aims to deliver a user-friendly experience that celebrates local vendors while making it easy for customers to shop unique, curated products. This launch marks an exciting milestone in El Locale’s mission to bring small business offerings to a broader online audience.
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THE PROBLEM
As El Locale prepares to launch its e-commerce website, the team identified key challenges that needed to be addressed before going live. These included creating an intuitive sign-up process for business accounts, creating order-tracking features, and creating customer profile pages with the conceptualizing of a future "affiliate" user function. Additionally, their current screens required a UI refresh to ensure a cohesive, modern, and user-friendly experience that aligns with industry standards.
THE SOLUTION
In response to these pre-launch challenges, our team focused on refining high-fidelity wireframes to optimize user flows and modernize the UI. We conceptualized the business sign-up experience, streamlined order tracking functionality, and reimagined customer profiles with possible "affiliate" user functions to better meet user needs. These updates ensure that El Locale’s website is positioned to offer a seamless and visually engaging experience upon launch.
Team Structure
During this 4-week contract project for a client preparing to launch their e-commerce website, we focused on addressing key challenges through user-centered design and collaborative feedback.
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My Role: Lead UX researcher and designer, conducting all research, analyzing findings, and creating user flows. Later, I contributed to UI design to ensure consistency with the research insights.
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Team Members: Worked with two dedicated UI designers who concentrated on crafting visually polished screens.
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Collaboration: Engaged closely with the client, incorporating their feedback at every stage to refine the designs and align with their vision.
This structured approach ensured efficient teamwork and a seamless blend of research and design to meet the project goals.
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Research Statements and Goals
Our research addressed key challenges in preparing El Locale’s platform for launch, focusing on both new and existing designs to ensure usability, user satisfaction, and alignment with business needs.
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Research Problems
1. Usability for New Flows:
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How can the Business Request to Join, Order Tracking (business view), and Consumer Profile/Feed screens meet the unique needs of business and consumer users?
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How can these flows stand out while feeling intuitive and familiar, aligning with established concepts users are accustomed to?
2. Profile/Feed Relevance:
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What features would users expect (or not want) in the Consumer Profile/Feed screens including the use of affiliate links?
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Is this feature necessary to enhance user engagement and experience?
3. UI Refinements:
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What adjustments are needed to the current designs to ensure that El Locale’s main website flows are intuitive, visually appealing, and responsive to user needs?
Research Goals
1. Conceptualization:
Design and validate user flows for new features, ensuring they are user-centered and intuitive.
2. Usability Testing:
Identify pain points and areas for refinement in both new concepts and existing UI designs.
3. Optimization:
Refine the visual and functional aspects of the platform’s main flows, ensuring alignment with user and business expectations.
How Might We Statements
How might we refine the current UI to make the main website flows intuitive, visually appealing, and capable of meeting user needs?
How might we create an intuitive and seamless sign-up process for businesses joining El Locale?
How might we craft a consumer profile and feed experience that delivers value, balancing personalization with simplicity?
Research Methodologies
I conducted both secondary and primary research to address the client's needs. Secondary research included reviewing the client’s user personas and stats, along with analyzing competitors’ e-commerce platforms for affiliate links, user profiles, and business dashboards. For primary research, I performed multiple usability testing rounds to refine both existing and conceptualized screens, ensuring they met the needs of business and consumer users effectively.
Secondary Research
As the starting point of my Discovery Phase using Lean UX principles, I began by immersing myself in the research provided by the client. This included examining El Locale's existing findings to understand the problem landscape they aimed to address, along with their core values and target audience.
From there, my responsibilities were twofold:
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Synthesizing El Locale's existing research to identify patterns, gaps, and user pain points.
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Launching my own research to conceptualize and validate the new screen designs requested by the client, which had not yet been explored.
This dual approach ensured a strong foundation for innovative and user-centered design.
Client Research
The following data, provided by the client, highlights key user behaviors, preferences, and engagement trends that informed the design direction and strategic focus for the project and El Locale as a whole.
"Over three-quarters of shoppers visit a business’s website before their physical location"
By connecting the client's user persona with key statistics and pain points, I gained valuable insights into their audience's needs, shaping a user-focused design approach.
" Current platforms are product centric, not community centric. "
Personal Research
With a strong grasp of El Locale's overall problem and solution from the client’s research, I directed my personal research efforts into two key areas:
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Understanding Business Request to Join and Business Order Tracking screens.
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Exploring the conceptualization of the Social/Affiliate Link screens.
This approach ensured a focused strategy for creating intuitive and engaging solutions for these critical features that my team was tasked with.
Business Request to Join & Business Order Tracking Research
Drawing inspiration from platforms like Etsy and Volusion, I analyzed their intuitive sign-up flows, focusing on minimal, user-friendly layouts while emphasizing how El Locale could benefit small businesses through clear call-to-actions like a "Request to Join" button to increase participation.
Understanding the essential elements for businesses to effectively and intuitively track orders was critical in designing a seamless system. Recognizing that many businesses joining El Locale may be accustomed to traditional order tracking flows, we aimed to align with familiar conventions to ensure usability, avoiding unnecessary reinvention while maintaining clarity and efficiency.
Social/Affiliate Links Research
To design El Locale’s social-media inspired feed, I examined platforms like Benable, where users share purchases and earn mutual rewards through affiliate links. This approach informed features like purchasing recommended products directly, fostering engagement and trust.
Per my research, the client's concept of combining a social media feed with affiliate links for product sharing and purchases is a unique feature for an e-commerce website. While similar elements, such as referral links and rewards systems, exist on platforms like WooCommerce and Smile.io, this approach requires additional user testing to refine its functionality and engagement for a more personalized experience.
Early Designs
Existing Prototype
My team was given the existing website prototype to enhance both its usability and aesthetics. The following outlines parts of the initial version that my team iterated on, informed by the usability testing I later conducted.
New Screens - Wireframes
Based on the secondary research I conducted for the new screens the client requested, my team developed these wireframes as a foundation for further usability and flow testing with users.
Business Request to Join
Order Tracking
Social Feed
Primary Research
Screener
I first gathered my base of participants participating in my usability tests for El Locale's current prototype and for the new screens my team will eventually be designing.
The participant criteria for my usability testing was derived from client-provided user personas and initial research insights to ensure relevance and alignment with El Locale’s target audience. This criteria included:
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Shops online at least monthly.
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Shops from small or local businesses at least a few times a year.
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Ranks support for local businesses as 3 to 5 on a 5-point scale.
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Willing to participate in a testing session.
Participants were recruited using a Google Forms screener shared via social media and community outreach.
Usability Testing - Existing Prototype
El Locale had a finished website, but refinements were needed. I conducted usability testing to identify pain points, followed by UI and aesthetic improvements to enhance the user experience. Below are the insights from the session.
Usability Testing
Following usability testing on El Locale’s current prototype, multiple changes were identified for improvement based on user feedback.
Positive Feedback:
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Clear account creation process
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Easy to navigate through purchase and order management
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Straightforward payment and shipping information update
Negative Feedback:
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Difficulty distinguishing between business and product pages
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Confusing “favorite” system due to unclear icons
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Unable to easily access or favorite businesses
Implementations To Be Made:
clearer icons, intuitive hyperlinks, more consistent UI
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missing nav to business
unclear favoriting
unnecessary results bar
Usability Testing - New Screens - Wireframes
In addition to refining El Locale’s existing website, my team was tasked with designing new conceptual screens, including a "Business Request to Join" flow, a "Track Orders" page for business accounts, and a "Social Feed/Profile" concept. Below is a summary of the usability testing conducted on these new wireframes.
unclear side nav bar
"stories" not needed
need better list names
Usability Testing Round #1
Following usability testing on the newly conceptualized screens, several areas for improvement were identified.
Positive Feedback:
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Clear order tracking flow for business accounts
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The business request process felt straightforward
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Users appreciated the community-focused profile screen for sharing recent purchases
Negative Feedback:
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“Business Request to Join” page lacked clarity on its integration
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Struggled to distinguish between the “All Orders” and “Track Orders”
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Unnecessary use of social media elements
Implementations To Be Made:
combine "order" tabs, remove extraneous social media features, refine profile page
Final Usability Testing
Usability Testing - New Screens - High Fidelity
Incorporating insights from the wireframe usability testing on the "new concept flows," my team refined and updated the screens to deliver a more intuitive and user-focused experience, directly informed by real user feedback.
Usability Testing
The following highlights key iterations needed to finalize the screens.
Positive Feedback:
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Users appreciated the clean, straightforward interface
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The order tracking page was intuitive and user-friendly
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Social feed design felt clear and easy to navigate
Negative Feedback:
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Dashboard lacked an analytics section for better insights
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Business Request to Join flow felt underdeveloped
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Timestamps on new orders were noticeably missing
Implementations To Be Made:
analytics section, clearer labels, more detailed sign-up flow
tracking felt intuitive
feels sparse
missing store names
lacking time stamps
needs analytics
Impact of the Research
My research and iterative process were pivotal in delivering El Locale’s final screens. Using Lean UX principles, I conducted rapid usability testing to refine wireframes and high-fidelity designs, improving functionality across key flows like "Business Request to Join," "Track Orders," and the "Social Feed/Profile."
My deep understanding of the research allowed me to directly contribute to the UI design when creating the finished product, bridging gaps between insights and execution to ensure clarity and alignment in the final deliverables.
Final Deliverables
El Locale's Current Website
Business Request to Join
Order Tracking
Social Feed
Reflections
What's Next?
Reflecting on this project, I’m proud of the cohesive work my team and I achieved in laying a solid foundation for El Locale’s future growth. Beyond developing high-fidelity screens for features like the "Business Request to Join" flow, "Track Orders" page, and "Social Feed/Profile" screens, we identified and addressed critical insights that shifted the company in the right direction. For example, usability testing revealed that users valued streamlined profile pages showcasing recent purchases with affiliate rewards over an elaborate social media experience. Similarly, business users expressed a need for more advanced tracking tools on the dashboard, emphasizing analytics and order management.
These updates, along with revamped existing screens, address usability challenges while supporting future scalability. While our work provided the framework for these improvements, the next step for El Locale is to fully implement and integrate these screens into their platform. Doing so will elevate the user experience for both businesses and customers, further aligning with the mission to support local shopping in impactful ways.