ANOTHER LANE

E-commerce Site Design

TEAM

Liberty Concepts

MY ROLE

Design Independently

TIMELINE

May 2020 - Dec 2020

Another Lane is a sneaker reseller brand which believes the true value of the sneaker culture is built up by the sneaker community network and each individual’s relationships. However brands like StockX and GOAT have taken that away from those individuals and turned them into anonymous users while also stripping them of upwards to $5000 a year for their acquired product. Thus, Another Lane’s solution is to design a digital marketplace to assist high net worth sneaker resellers in growing their business while bringing authenticity back to the sneaker community.

Problem

Another Lane had built a simple e-commerce website with Shopify. However, their new business goal was to upgrade the current one-side e-commerce site to a two-way platform that can support two types of user needs. In addition, to bring the authentic sneaker culture back to the community, the website needs a new section to feature editorial content, and the ability to communicate. A redesigned responsive web platform was necessary to address the problems.

Previous Another Lane Website

Goal

To bring the authenticity back to the sneaker community, the primary goal of this project includes:

Design a digital platform for sneaker reselling.
Have clear ways for sneaker culture news and editorials.
Showcase Another Lane members' story.
Ability to allow communication between sellers and buyers.
Provide ways for membership registration.

Challenge

Due to the limitation of the project scope and budget, build an e-commerce platform with basic functions at the first stage of the project was necessary. In order to avoid the complexity of the website development. How to design a creative and easy-to-build MVP solution is a challenge.

DISCOVERY

Analyze Competitors

Through the analysis of competitor platforms, we learned the essential features of a sneaker resell platforms. Also, how different platforms organize their content and style their website. These helped us to define the core functions and features of the new site, as well as created design solutions to stand out from competitors' website.

Understand The User

At the beginning phase of the project, Another Lane provided some initial knowledge of users. During the communication with their founders, we found that they are typical power user. Through the understanding of their problems and experience, we defined the seller needs. While we got insights from the initial knowledge of the buyer type of users provided by the client. To avoid the bias, I also interviewed some friends who are sneaker lovers.

Primary Needs

The personas and the competitor analysis helped us determine the needs that the new site should meet. We generated all features the site could potentially have, and then prioritized them based on the level of value to users, to business. Meanwhile, keep in mind the scope, timeline as well as the technical complexity. The key features of the new sites include:

Clear organized product list that reflects AL’s expertise and providing a seamless shopping experience.
Efficient product search and filter to easily find products.
Membership registration to access more features and manage account.
News and Editorials section to learn and communicate about sneaker culture.
Member spotlight to tell their stories and increase traffic.
Detailed product information page to ensure proper product selection.
Chat function to allow talking between sellers and buyers.
Another Lane certification to protect buyers from fake products.
Simple managed shoe listing from the mobile device to allow sellers to manage their listing anytime.
Taking and uploading photos from a phone camera simplify the process and save time for sellers to add shoes.

User Flows

The two user flows are based on the two primary user scenarios:

Buyer Task: Browse the platform to buy shoes
Seller Task: Create/manage shoe listing and sell shoes

Mapping out the two user flows helped us define the design scope and found out the most efficient path for users to achieve their goals.

DESIGN PHASE

Wireframe

When buyers visit the homepage and they don't have a clear goal of what to buy, we designed three curated lists to provide buyers suggested products as a starting point of their journey. Sneaker community culture is what we want to highlight and emphasize on the homepage. So users can explore the featured news content and member spotlights to learn more about the community. The last section, I made the "Become a member" prominent in the footer, as it is one of Another Lane's primary business needs at the initial stage of the platform.

Homepage Design

In order to visually stand out from competitors' website, we decided to use black theme in the overall design. As black is Another Lane's brand color, the black background can enhance the brand identity. Also, black is a powerful color that provides a strong attitude and vibe which well expresses Another Lane's brand culture. In addition, a black background can provide a great opportunity for presenting graphic-heavy content. It helps to enhance the visual perception, so that users will focus more on the photos.

Product Category Page

In one of our user journey scenarios, Jason wants to buy himself a Jordan basketball sneaker. The filter and sort by features on the shop all page can help him to quickly narrow down the product results and find what he wants.

Single Product Page

To provide a more smooth browsing experience on the product detail page, a fixed position shoe information group on the right side of the page allows users to check the info seamlessly while they are browsing the shoe photos. Besides, clicking any shoe photo will trigger the gallery view which allows users to see shoe detail from different angled photos.

Seller: Create New Shoe - Mobile Experience

The mobile adding new shoe and edit shoes features allow users simply manage their store anytime they want.

OTHER SCREENS

Usability Testing

We did internal usability testing during the wireframe and design phase. The testing was based on the following scenarios which can validate whether the solution can meet the users and business needs.

Buy a pair of sneakers you are looking for.
Browse the articles on the site.
Create a new shoe from your mobile device.

The key findings of the usability testing:

Users were able to easily navigate the site and find products they are interested in.
Create New Shoe experience was smooth.
We noticed that we missed an alert feature to notify users when their interested shoes were sold out.

Alert

Since there is only one pair of shoes for each product, they can be sold out quickly. So when a product is sold out but has not been removed from the public-facing side, the alert can notify other buyers and provide a solution to explore other products.

Next Step

Through usability testing and functional testing, the solution we provided to Another Lane can address the primary users and business needs. After the site is launched, the next step we would like to continue iterating the product by gathering users feedback. Also, continue to improve the new seller inquiring experience. Besides, during the discovery phase, we defined some features that are not MVP but are nice to have. It will be good to add these features in future iterations.

Nice To Have Features:

Product rating
Shipping tracking
Collection/Like
Store theme customization
Events
Group chats/forum
Shoe trading
Compare pricing