Case Study: Rejuvenating Fresh's eCommerce store

A global skincare brand differentiated by high-end, scientific, and personalized products and services, fresh set their sights on replicating this sophisticated customer experience on their eCommerce website. But in order to strike the right balance between simplicity, elegance, and effectiveness, fresh needed a design based upon user insights and data. That’s where we came in.

Working with the digital experience analytics platform, Contentsquare, allowed us to leverage the platform’s detailed quantitative data research to better understand how users experienced fresh’s website. Together we evaluated heat maps, reports, and intricate page-level details to gather additional findings and seek to discover the ‘why’ behind the numbers as we strategized our redesign.

To match fresh’s commitment to a fully sensorial customer experience, we blended Contentsquare’s quantitative data with our qualitative user research by observing every aspect of users’ interactions with the existing web interface and conducting contextual interviews. These insights revealed four key recommendations that informed everything to come:

Simplicity: Users preferred guided experiences facilitated by product sorting tools that provided a bespoke experience customized to the needs of a diverse customer base

Elegance: fresh’s customers craved a premium experience cultivated by brand unity across channels and features, high-quality design, and a sophisticated, adaptable, and reactive interface

Effectiveness: This group of consumers viewed products through a critical lens, placing their trust in award recognition, peer reviews, and the acclaim of social influencers

The Asian perspective: As one of fresh’s core customer segments, the specific expectations and standards of young Asian shoppers needed to be reflected in the new eCommerce experience

fresh’s redefined eCommerce experience is informed by the data, our research, and the brand’s commitment to performance, simplicity, elegance, and effectiveness.

Simplicity is built into this rejuvenated site’s DNA through a global design system that defines a consistent framework for every digital experience across the fresh ecosystem. The visual identity has been elevated to match this brand’s high-end, elegant customer experience. Designed for a localized experience, designs were easily adaptable to languages and locations. Together, these factors catalyze an extraordinary and effective experience for the end-user.

Research-informed design matures into an exceptional digital experience through iterative usability testing, and so naturally, this was the next step for fresh’s revitalized eCommerce site.

We set test users free on the website, observing their actions every step of the way. Users embraced the new website navigation and product sorting features and reported confidence in the brand’s quality. They also reported feeling empowered to find uniquely perfect products thanks to the focus on diversity — a major win. At the same time, users reported that they wanted an easier way to quickly find on-sale items, a more concise homepage, and more transparency on why specific products were being recommended to them.

Inspired by this feedback, we finalized the website by making some defining tweaks. This included replacing a long scroll with a limited number of homepage sections, adding a prominent ‘sale items’ tab, and renaming the ‘may we recommend’ option to ‘our favorite picks’ section. Every choice we made was determined by user data and input — the wants and needs of people are central to everything we do.

The true test in any product’s journey is whether it can be authentically implemented into a technical framework. We collaborated closely with fresh’s in-house team every step of the way to flag potential limitations and identify solutions together.

The rejuvenated, refreshed eCommerce website offers a much-improved customer experience designed to bring a high-end bespoke customer experience to life. Flexible by nature, this site offers a local feel to a global community of users, with product search options designed with diverse customer needs in mind.