Sanrio.com e-Commerce Redesign

Project Brief

​Overview:
Sanrio is a Japanese company that designs, licenses and produces products focusing on the kawaii (cute) segment of Japanese popular culture. 
The establishment is a parent company for iconic characters such as Hello Kitty, Gudetama, Aggretsuko, Badtz-Maru, Little Twin Stars and many more. The company owns 200+ characters, and each character has its own unique branding.

Project Goals:

• Designing responsive website and total usability redesign of UI/UX and Visual for sanrio.com website and micro-site.
• Another goal is to fix existing usability issues while creating an environment of continuous improvement that aligns with our users' evolving needs and expectations.​

​Role:
Visual design
UI/UX
Digital brand marketing designer
Content strategy and development

​Tools:
Adobe CC, Sketch, Basecamp, Jira
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Duration:
January 2016-August 2017

Issues:

• ​Originally, sanrio.com had a separate m.sanrio.com for mobile browsing. We got a lot of traffic coming into the mobile site but had very few final conversions from it.
• We wanted to increase conversions and create a seamless experience for customers to complete their purchases from different devices.
• We also needed help keeping a balance between the content for the e-commerce marketing and brand initiative.
• The brand would love to have a 50:50 balance between the two and make sanrio.com the ultimate online destination for brand fans and home for the 200+ Sanrio characters.

Project Plan:

• Redesign and build a new E-commerce website that enhances user experience, improves visual branding for the shop, and strengthens brand presence.  
• Motivate buyers to visit the site to finish their order and decrease the number of dropped and abandoned shopping carts volume.
• More friendly SEO page layout.
• Build a marketing landing page with content from a store catalog and an e-zine (online magazine). The page can leverage the brand's look and feel, feature the latest products, increase ROI, and leverage SEO.
• Strengthen the brand awareness for other Sanrio characters, a little less Hello Kitty focus, more Sanrio as general.
• Keeping product listings, descriptions, and images up-to-date ensures users view accurate and relevant information.
• Update the website navigations to enhance users' overall shopping experience.
• Enhanced search capabilities to help users find the information they are looking for more quickly and easily while also providing more relevant and accurate search results. 
• Streamlining creative production for the small team, how to create and produce more with limited team members.

Project Scope:
Homepage 
Navigation
Checkout Page
Product Category Browse Page
Product Details Page
Corporate Pages
Product filter
Enhanced search capabilities
Brand Page
Promo Page
Special Landing Page 
​Email Signup Forms

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The Process

Style Guide and Journey

Wireframe

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Project Completion

Desktop

Mobile

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Result

• ​We were able to addressed and resolved website usability issues through a strategic and user-centric approach. 
• Create a responsive website with responsive design principles to ensure a seamless user experience across various devices and screen sizes.
• Two years after its initial launch, the website performed as expected. The responsive design increased mobile transactions. In 2015, the desktop experience was leading the customer online experience, but now, more and more customers are using their mobile devices to complete their transactions.
• We can maintain production as if the team is at total capacity by using a templatized CMS with a team that has shrunk by half. Although Hello Kitty is still our number one girl, changing the design to a more versatile look for the other characters helps boost marketing initiation and increase sales from the others.
• We can create more content balance and experience between e-commerce and the branding side.
• Additionally, we improved the checkout and product browsing experience while expanding the site to be the online umbrella destination for Sanrio, Inc.'s other ventures.