SecretSales had an outdated website, so as the only designer, I worked closely with the product manager to overhaul the entire design, visually as well as improving the UX. I worked for them as a full-time designer for 18 months and I now work with them as a consultant.
Increasing Registrations
SecretSales is a private shopping club and although membership is free, you are required to register in order to enter the site. This provides a challenge in converting visitors into members. We noticed immediately that the initial form was just too long and our research confirmed our thoughts that it was not converting as well as we knew it could be.
Initially we couldn’t convince the marketing team to remove unnecessary fields such as DOB and Post Code from the registration form so we had to work around that issue as best we could.
The first step we took was to split the form into multiple steps to make it look less intimidating. Research shows that breaking a form into smaller chunks makes it less intimidating and therefore easier to get started. In addition to that, psychology studies show people are more likely to complete a task they've already started.
The registration conversion rate increased by 30% as a result
Style Guide
During the time I was a full-time employee for SecretSales, I noticed there was a need to help the front-end developers due to the amount of work they had to do. I worked closely with them to create a style guide, to improve the consistency of the brand across the entire website.
It was also useful to the company as a whole, as they could make changes by using the style guide, without having to hire another designer for smaller pieces of work. It gives them more flexibility, reduces costs and takes less time, all while keeping the design consistency across the entire website.
Filter Improvements
81/100 on the System Usability Scale (SUS)
System Usability Scale is an industry standard way to measure the usability of a design based on a questionnaire given to users. It consists of 10 statements with five response levels of ranging from "Strongly agree" to "Strongly disagree".
A score out of a maximum of 100 is calculated from the results. The average SUS score is 68. SecretSales is well above average with an A grade score of 81 which puts it in the the top 10% of scores. I'm proud to have contributed to that achievement using my design knowledge.
"Tom doesn’t cut corners"
"Tom was the catalyst in changing the way we approached web-design, specifically moving to responsive-design a full 6 months before the movement emerged in the wider industry. He tackles challenges by future-proofing UX.
"I appreciate the standard he has set internally with delivering pages that work effectively.
"Tom is reliable, straight-forward and keen to understand the nuances of the business in order to develop relevant work. He doesn’t cut corners. I would and have recommended Tom because I know he delivers to a high standard."
Nish Kukadia CEO, SECRETSALES.com
User Feedback
We made sure to constantly collect user feedback, so we could see what we were doing well and what could be improved based on actual experiences. Here are just a few of the many positive comments we received:
“Excellent site with ordering system made extremely simple. Will continue to purchase from this site.”
“The shopping experience with secretsales went well. A very good site. Well done.”
“Perfect shopping experience, website is very easy to use.”
“I made my purchased and checkout within 5 minutes, it was very quick and efficient very good service i will be most likely use your services again thank you very much”
"Great experience. Website is easy to use and checkout is efficient. First time ordering and will definitely be doing so again.”
"Easy to order, good pictures, easy to navigate website and payment very easy. I would definitely return, thanks”
"Very easy too use, well laid out clear presentation payment pages were also clear and easy to use”
"It was a really good experience. Alot better than other similar sites”
"Your shopping experience is very simple, quick and easy. Especially processing the actual card payment at the end which makes such a difference especially when you are trying to slip a sneaky purchase in while you are supposed to be working!"
"Im going to be in my wifes good books forever....so amazed at how seemless the mobile site was…”
"I find this a very very easy website to use and i have had quite a few purchases from Secret sales, its one of my favourite sites"
