130% YoY revenue growth · 2.3× order volume
OUTCOME
WooCommerce · Fancy Product Designer · Adobe CC · HTML/CSS
TOOLS
June 2023 – Ongoing
TIMELINE
Web Design Manager (promoted from Prepress)
MY ROLE
Case Study 02 — Deep Dive
Diagnosing UX Friction and Rebuilding for Self-Service Conversion
Redesigning a Cluttered Web-to-Print Platform
OVERVIEW
A self-service platform only works if users can actually serve themselves
The platform had the technical infrastructure in place but was failing at the most fundamental UX level. I had spent months inside this platform as a Prepress Designer — building templates, testing features, and experiencing it as a user — before I was ever given the mandate to fix it.
By the time I was promoted to Web Design Manager, I had a detailed map of exactly what was broken and why. This case study focuses on the specific UX problems I identified and how I prioritized and executed the rebuild — systematically, from the most impactful issues down.
A limited range of product templates restricted the platform's potential customer base and made the catalog feel underdeveloped.
Thin Template Library
06
Missing attributes, descriptions, and filtering meant customers couldn't make informed decisions or narrow results.
Weak Product Listings
05
Too many interactive elements made customization overwhelming rather than empowering, especially for non-designers.
Cluttered Templates
04
Every product page was essentially invisible to search engines — no descriptions, no tags. Organic discovery wasn't happening.
No SEO Foundation
03
A flat, undifferentiated menu structure made it nearly impossible to browse the catalog logically. No hierarchy, no grouping, no clear path.
Poor Navigation
02
Customers had no visual reference for what they were actually buying — just a flat template editor with no finished-product context.
No Product Mockups
01
The Problems
Six layers of friction, mapped before the rebuild began.
Each problem below was identified through direct experience inside the platform — as a prepress designer building templates, fielding customer issues, and watching where the flow broke down.
The original platform — before redesign.
Product templates built during the Prepress phase.
Priority 5 · Conversion
Checkout Friction
Identified and removed drop-off points in the checkout flow to reduce abandonment between customization and order completion. Fewer required fields, clearer summary, faster confirmation.
05
04
Priority 4 · Acquisition
SEO Foundation
Wrote descriptions and applied tags and metadata across all 400+ products — giving each listing a fighting chance at organic visibility. The platform had been invisible to search engines; this work changed that fundamentally.
Priority 3 · Discoverability
Filtering & Catalog Structure
Implemented filtering by product type, size, and use case. Essential as the template library grew — a flat product list of 400+ items isn't navigable without filters.
03
02
Priority 2 · Comprehension
Product Pages & Mockups
Added mockups to every product listing so customers could see the finished product in context. Expanded descriptions and attributes to answer the questions customers were asking before they had to ask them.
01
Priority 1 · Foundation
Navigation & Information Architecture
Restructured 30+ categories into a logical hierarchy. Rebuilt the menu to reduce decisions before reaching a relevant product — grouping by use case and product type rather than internal manufacturing categories.
Diagnosis & Prioritization
Fix the core user journey first, then work outward
I prioritized fixes in order of their impact on the core user journey: find the right product → understand it → customize it → check out. Everything else was secondary until this path worked.
The Customization Problem
Constraining intentionally to feel more free.
The goal was to make customization feel effortless — not by removing capability, but by removing unnecessary decisions.
I rebuilt templates to limit editable zones to what customers genuinely needed to change: business name, contact info, a headline. Pre-set fonts and color palettes kept results looking professional regardless of user design skill. Clear visual hierarchy within each template made primary, secondary, and decorative elements obvious at a glance.
One of the more nuanced challenges was the product customization layer itself. The original templates were built with maximum flexibility — giving users a blank canvas when what they actually needed was guided structure.
Redesigned template — guided, professional results.
Original template — too much flexibility, no structure.
The final Consolidated store — homepage, product browsing, and customization experience.
$9,763
Peak monthly avg revenue (from $4,251)
30+
Page types redesigned
400+
Products with applied SEO
2.3x
Increase in order volume
130%
Year-over-year revenue growth
$151K+
Total Platform revenue
Small, deliberate decisions. Compounding results.
RESULTS
Fixing a UX problem at this scale isn't one big intervention — it's a series of small, deliberate decisions that compound. Rebuilding navigation, adding mockups, tightening the customization experience, applying SEO: none of these alone would have moved the needle. Together, they transformed a platform that existed into one that worked.
Fixing a UX problem at this scale isn't one big intervention — it's a series of small, deliberate decisions that compound. Rebuilding navigation, adding mockups, tightening the customization experience, applying SEO: none of these alone would have moved the needle. Together, they transformed a platform that existed into one that worked.
"Every extra click, every ambiguous label, every missing piece of product information is a place where someone decides it's not worth the effort."
KEY TAKEAWAY