Ridge Footwear is a prominent performance tactical footwear brand that has been an industry leader for the past 20 years, providing for paramedicals and the police.
Problem:
Customer’s are always confused in search for an appropriate product or a variation, and finding information pertaining to a product. Similar issues for B2B customers.
Vision:
To Re-design the current website from ground up, with an easy product/collection layout and accurate information within the respective product page.
The Small product catalog inspired a very simple and familiar homepage layout for the users. Upon UX Research, I found most users scrolling and searching for content instead of instantly going for a navigational menu or searching. From the 52 users with whom the prototype website was tested on 31 knew what they were looking for, 11 users wished to request a quote or a better pricing on a product, 7 users were interested in searching for a local retailer selling the brand and such interactions dictated most of the feature development on the site.
A Quick glance at the desktop viewport preview of the homepage between the new (top) and the old (bottom)
Working with WooCommerce had its challenges in order to achieve the design goal. Hence Re-platforming to Shopify was a necessary evil (Blessing).
From Shopify rooted deep in E-Commerce to my own personal expertise with the platform made it a better choice in order to achieve the Re-branding/ Re-design goals. However, it wasn’t without challenges, such as inventory, URL backlinking and current user base’s expectations.
Given the small catalog of products, it was really important to present all necessary information for a product on a single page, with faster load times, and all options to be accessible to the customer base.
An option such as Request a Quote was made available due to a common request from Police departments across the states.
Something as basic as a Store locator can benefit a user a lot especially the ones who’d like to try a size before making a purchase.
The step was also encouraged by the fact that one of the largest stakeholders in our initial research was B2B customers.
It was important to let them know as a brand we care. with over 90% traffic to our site being direct, and over 50% customers preferring to buy at a real brick and mortar store, the simple and intuitive store locator functionality enabled us to market the nearest B2B partner with a customer on our website.