Connecting Athletes with Brands
Optimizing the eCommerce Customer Experience
Solved usability problems for 5 brands: Giro, Bell Helmets, Blackburn, Copilot, Krash & Raskullz
Provided digital solutions for the Sales teams’ new B2B ecommerce platform
Analyzed customers’ web behavior on D2C sites in all phases of the shopping process
Bell Product Registration UX Wireframe
Customers were unclear how to register products online, so Steve built an html ready functional prototype to show the rest of the team how customers would interact with the site. It was a big win for the business stakeholders because they could visualize how the interaction would work before any serious engineering code was planned or laid down in stone. It was a huge time saver for both marketing and the developer team as well, and I was able to illustrate to everyone how we could provide a smoother, frictionless, user experience.
Blackburn UX Navigation Taxonomy
After reviewing and researching consumer behavior via heat maps and mouse tracking on Blackburn’s home page, I came to the conclusion that we needed to consider redefining the navigation structure in order to promote the brand’s products and make them easier to find during the shopping experience to ignite the Add-to-Cart process. After many rounds of internal review with all stakeholders both on the business and creative side including brand manager and ecommerce director, we came to a decision based on user input and my wireframes to make the site easier to use and quicker for consumers to find products and begin to fill up their shopping carts.
Giro Sport Design UX Product Filtering
Customer service was flooded with calls during Covid, their #1 return were shoes and didn’t know what to do. I came up with a strategy to help reduce the amount of customer confusion when it came to buying a pair of cycling shoes. The consumers didn’t understand what cleat bolt pattern was and most of them were riding Peloton bikes at home. The solution was a number of things: create a news blog that explains what cleats go with road, mountain, indoor cycling and Peloton shoes, so that they understand what they need to buy. Secondly and more importantly, I redesigned the taxonomy of the sidebar filtering architecture, and using our PIM uploaded cleat compatibility data for close to 100 models of our shoes, so users could sort and filter according to both cleat compatibility pattern (flat v.s. 2- bolt v.s. 3-bolt) and also riding application style (indoor v.s. mountain v.s. road). It was a big win becuase soon after launching my recommendations, shoe return rates slowed down, and the bottom line for the shoe business was much less negatively impacted.
Athlete Social Blogs
Steve designed and built several blog templates for Salesforce integration during the summer of 2023, including front-end code html/css/js for several professional athletes such as Rachel Straight and Tyler McCaul, and used storytelling and merchandising strategies to promote the athlete’s favorite product picks.
SEO Search Engine Optimization
Using SEM Rush and AI tools, Steve was able to analyze the competition for Blackburn’s products, and provide a strategy for higher ranking organic search results. With the new keywords, meta descriptions, and alt tags, the website was now ADA compliant, and one of the first bike tools websites to have all SEO data entact in order to boost conversions, traffic, increase sales, and provide a better user experience.
Athlete Support Program and Pro Deal Campaigns
Bell Helmets had the need for a functional ASP and an Action Sports ProDeal program, that would seamlessly allow athletes to apply and go through the approval/rejection process while allowing the sales admin to easily monitor applications and effectively communicate with the applicants. Steve was able to wireframe out the requirements and functionality of the forms and campaigns, and provide UAT testing and bug tracking via Jira, while managing the web production and code releases with IT, collaborate with Bell’s lead visual designer, and provide updates to business stakeholders. Rigorous testing and validation was required both on the customer end as well as on the Admin side of the website, across multiple bowsers and devices.
Scope
Digital eCommerce Marketing
Brainstorming & Collaboration
Design Thinking
Interactive Prototyping
Lean Iterative UX Design
UAT and Cross Browser/Platform Validation and Tracking
Front End Development
SEO Sem Rush + AI