The Problem Statement
Artfinder's homepage prioritizes artist promotion over art discovery, leading to poor user engagement and hindering conversions. The lack of clear category navigation and visually compelling artwork displays prevents users from easily finding desired art, impacting their perception of Artfinder as a comprehensive art marketplace.
Impact:
Users: Frustration, difficulty finding art, shorter browsing sessions, and potential abandonment.
Sales/Marketing: Lower conversion rates, ineffective campaigns, and missed sales targets.
Artists: Reduced artwork visibility and fewer sales opportunities.
Customer Support: Increased inquiries about navigation and art discovery.
Business:
Reduced sales due to poor art discovery.
Decreased user engagement with shorter browsing times.
Weakened brand perception as a primary art destination.
Increased costs to acquire new customers due to low conversion.
Overview
The Artfinder homepage redesign strategically shifted the platform's focus from artist promotion to art discovery through user-centered design and phased implementation, ultimately enhancing engagement and conversion rates.
Outcomes
Phase 1 brought 10% uplift in conversion
Enhanced Art Discoverability
Improved Conversion Rates
Strategic Stakeholder Alignment
Smoother Development Process
Discovery
The Artfinder homepage currently prioritizes artist promotion over effective art discovery, leading to a fragmented user experience and hindering conversion rates. Key issues include inefficient use of the hero carousel, excessive focus on value propositions above the fold, and a lack of clear category navigation. The current design fails to leverage the homepage as a starting point for the checkout journey, particularly for first-time visitors who require guidance in finding desired artwork.
Detailed Findings:
Inefficient Hero Carousel:
The hero carousel, intended for category selection, requires manual user interaction to reveal all available categories, limiting discoverability.
Opportunity: Optimise this space for more efficient category presentation and immediate visual engagement.
Overemphasis on Value Propositions:
Value propositions occupy a significant portion of the above-the-fold area, detracting from the visual impact of the artwork and delaying the user's journey to art discovery.
Opportunity: Re-evaluate and streamline value proposition presentation, prioritizing visual art display.
SEO H1 copy:
The SEO H1 copy is too large, and takes up too much of the above the fold space.
Opportunity: Reduce the size of the H1 copy.
Category Card Design:
Category cards are excessively large and rely on images, which may be unnecessary.
Opportunity: Simplify category cards by focusing on clear, concise text labels, reducing visual clutter.
Editor's Picks Card Content:
Inconsistent use of compelling body copy on Editor's Picks cards reduces their effectiveness.
Opportunity: Standardize and optimize body copy to drive engagement, or eliminate it if it does not add value.
Popular Artists Section:
Displaying artist ratings instead of like icons may confuse users and promote premature artist engagement.
Opportunity: Reconsider the purpose of this section and prioritize artwork display over artist ratings.
Discover Artists Section:
Overemphasis on artist promotion with small, indistinct artwork images makes it difficult for users to discover interesting pieces.
Opportunity: Re-evaluate the purpose of this section and prioritize artwork display with larger, more visually appealing images, or consider focusing on art category display.
Market and Competitive Analysis
Saatchi
Saatchi Art's homepage effectively leverages a strategy centered around rich categorization and curated content to drive user discovery and engagement. The design prioritizes clear pathways to popular product listing pages (PLPs) through prominent category tiles, alongside curated artwork sections that adapt to seasonal trends and editorial selections. This approach emphasizes guiding users towards specific art types and collections, fostering a focused and efficient browsing experience.
Key Findings:
Editorial-Driven Carousel:
The primary carousel directs users to curated collections of new artworks, showcasing Saatchi Art's editorial expertise and highlighting fresh content.
Strategic Category Tiles:
Prominent category tiles serve as direct funnels to high-traffic PLPs, enabling users to quickly access popular art categories.
Dynamic Curated Artwork Sections:
Regularly updated curated artwork sections, likely tailored to seasonal themes and editorial focuses, maintain user interest and highlight diverse art selections.
Focus on Guided Discovery:
Saatchi art has clearly focused on guiding the users to the art they are looking for by providing clear category options.
Singulart
Singulart's homepage strategy centers on showcasing individual artworks prominently, aiming to capture immediate visual engagement and immerse users in the platform's diverse artistic offerings. The design emphasizes high-quality artwork imagery and direct pathways to explore specific pieces and artist profiles, prioritizing the aesthetic experience and encouraging users to discover art through visually compelling displays.
Heatmap and scrollmap
Data analysis indicates a significant user segment actively scrolls to the category section of the homepage, suggesting a strong desire for structured art discovery. Furthermore, the category section demonstrates a higher click-through rate compared to elements located above it, reinforcing the notion that users are actively seeking category-based navigation to explore the art collection.
Define
Based on the presented user research findings, the team has agreed upon several key changes to the Artfinder homepage design. These decisions aim to improve art discoverability, optimize key messaging, and enhance the overall user experience, while maintaining revenue streams.
Hero Carousel Removal:
The team agreed to remove the carousel hero section, allowing for a more efficient and impactful use of the above-the-fold space.
USP & H1 Copy Optimization:
The USPs and H1 copy will be optimized for clarity, conciseness, and visual impact. This includes reducing the size of the H1 copy.
Featured Artists Section Retention:
Due to its significant contribution to revenue, the Featured Artists section will remain unchanged.
Category Card Simplification:
Images will be removed from category cards, focusing on clear and concise text labels to improve visual clarity and reduce clutter.
Editor's Picks Card Refinement:
Body copy and CTA copy will be removed from Editor's Picks cards, streamlining the design and focusing on visual impact.
Art Curation Emphasis:
The design will prominently highlight art curations to showcase the depth and breadth of the marketplace's offerings, reinforcing Artfinder's position as a comprehensive art destination.
Develop
Following the initial research findings and key decision-making meeting, three distinct design variations of the Artfinder homepage were created. These variations explored different approaches to art discovery, category presentation, and visual hierarchy, addressing the identified user needs and business objectives. Through iterative feedback sessions with stakeholders and the product team, each design variation provided valuable insights, leading to the development of a final homepage design that achieved alignment across product, marketing, and executive leadership.
Deliver
To facilitate a smoother development process and minimize disruption, the homepage redesign was strategically divided into two phases. This phased approach allowed for incremental improvements and optimized resource allocation. Following the final design approval, comprehensive developer handoff materials were created, including two distinct homepage variations (Phase 1 & 2), detailed prototypes, and guidance for CMS implementation.
Process:
Phased Implementation Strategy:
The project was divided into two distinct phases to manage development complexity and ensure a controlled rollout.
Phase 1 focused on implementing core design changes, while Phase 2 introduced more advanced features and refinements.
Homepage Design Variations (Phase 1 & 2):
Two separate homepage design variations were created, clearly delineating the features and functionalities to be implemented in each phase.
This allowed the dev team to focus on a smaller, more manageable scope of work at each stage.
Comprehensive Developer Handoff:
Detailed prototypes were provided for each phase, showcasing user flows and interactions across all four breakpoints.
Highlighted interactions were clearly documented to ensure accurate implementation of animations and transitions.
All components were linked to the existing design system, promoting consistency and efficiency.
Guidance was also provided on the sections of the page that needed to be built on the CMS, so that marketing and editors could change the content of those sections without needing developer assistance.
Phase 1 adaptation brought %10 increase in conversion.