RCA store

The RCA store is our merchandise division of the school where we sell exclusive house gear to schools and students so they may implement their own house system. Recently we have been tasked with updating our retail site and operation in order to accommodate wholesale customers.

TL;DR

  • Upgrade our merchandise department’s physical and digital storefronts to allow users to shop wholesale.

  • I am the UI designer and project manager of our Shopify storefront. I create flows and scripts to optimize workflow.

  • Our sales numbers were already on the rise but with the implementation of the new storefront the sales haven’t slowed down and our staff is having an easier time managing the demand.

Background

Following the success of the RCA House Points App and a few viral movements from our school, interest in what we do has been at an all time high. Part of what our school program sells is the House Points System and all of the merchandise that includes. We provide merchandise for our entire network across the US houses including everything from t-shirts and hoodies to banners and books. Scaling has come with its challenges and my role is to help organize and manage our online store and create a seamless experience our users.

The work

My quickly realized and was able to explain to our merchandise team that quickly scaling is a UX problem, not just a logistical one. We work mostly through Shopify but during this project began to establish connections with other products and vendors whether that be establishing an API with Salesforce to keep cleaner customer data or physically moving our inventory from the back of our store to a warehouse 2 miles away.

Defining the problem(s)

Defining the issues with scaling seemed quite straight forward at first but I quickly realized this project would be more nebulous that what I was used to. I wouldn’t be working with a design software and my teammates had different levels of understanding of the intricacies of an ecommerce platform.

Our inventory had reached a level that was not maintainable without more robust automation and our customers’ needs had evolved from only a few major school districts needing wholesale capabilities to wholesale becoming a cornerstone of the business.

Research & Planning

Being a UX designer first, my major tasks centered around keeping our customers engaged once they were on our site, making sure they could find what they needed in as few clicks as possible and if a customer did abandon their cart, it was with the intention of coming back for more. I was mainly able to accomplish this with software that allowed me to monitor customers’ pain points through concepts light heat tracking and frustration-click monitoring.

Once it was clear that more robust software and systems were going to be required to keep track of our merchandise and sales, the team had to come up with solutions that would help us navigate serving customers who typically order 3 shirts at a time, to customers who order 300.

Prototyping & user Testing

I was tasked with creating flows and scripts that would automate functionality in the hopes of reducing the work load of our back-end users and establishing a seamless, quick and accurate shopping experience for both retail and wholesale customers.

Additionally, I created new portals within our site so customers will always know where they are and are able to get the support they need.

launch & retrospective

The new site and wholesale operation have recently been released. The physical store and merchandise was recently moved and have pushed forward with our upgrades on the backend. We are currently tracking users’ experiences and taking notes.

We have already began work on ways to optimize the flows for both users and customers but so far nothing unexpected has occurred!