What store design activities make the most sense to run over the winter? A few come to mind:
- Card sorting. Remember all of that drum-beating that I’ve been doing for members about how important your nav is? Card sorts are how you rework your nav thoughtfully & profitably.
- PDP updates. Now’s a good time to finally build that swipeable, full-bleed image gallery that you’ve seen around. It’s also a good time to fine-tune your upsells. Nothing is off the table.
- More ambitious reworks. Now is a great time to make bolder changes that you’ve been putting off, up to and including re-theming or re-platforming your whole store. Deeper changes are lowest risk after big sale periods, because there will be reduced short-term impact and a higher likelihood of long-term optimization work. Plus, most of you did make a lot of money this past month, right?
You should probably also do what I’m doing and take some time off. You earned it.
This week, for paid members
- Our weekly paid lesson is about how to create process & structure alongside executives in consultative design.
- Our design of the week is all about the most common thing we experienced during last week’s sale.
- And I blowtorched a turkey. What? That has nothing to do with the private community? Oh, I suppose you’re right.
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Links
- The UK government has issued a white paper on deceptive design practices, and all of you should read it, regardless of your jurisdiction. It’s very likely that technology will be more strongly regulated over the coming decade, and when major state actors name the things you shouldn’t be doing, you probably shouldn’t be doing them well ahead of the due date.
- “The aura of care surrounding UX pretends that capitalism can be coaxed into giving a shit.” Barnburner essay about how design is a tool of capitalism, and largely will corrupt itself when faced with the levers of profit.
- Prototyping & usability testing usually tends to favor simplicity, since quality design tends to be simpler in nature. Another data point.
- Have an address validator.
- Practice value-based design. Weird thing to call it, though.