Shoes eCommerce
Diagnosing and designing omnichannel solutions.
Opportunity
The Shoes.com eCommerce websites included Shoes.com, OnlineShoes.com and Shoeme.ca. Stephen worked on both UX design for online and omni-channel design, helping the company to compete with best-in-class fashion and eCommerce competitors. The implementation of an Adobe Experience Manager CMS and A/B tested tactical changes were vehicles that could be used to improve the user experience and conversion.
In addition, Stephen could suggest a number of core UX improvements which could be implemented into the longer term strategic roadmap. The company was also launching brick and mortar retail stores. Stephen had the opportunity to input into the design process of these retails stores.
Process
Mapping and analyzing end-to-end omni-channel customer journeys.
- Procuring and using quantitative and qualitative customer data to understand customers.
- Journey visualizations to show diagnosis of problem areas and opportunities for improvement.
- Collaborating with stakeholders and executives to elicit business requirements and key metrics.
- Translating existing business requirements into effective and compelling user experiences.
- Influencing business requirements by providing quantitative and qualitative data to support UX expert hypothesis.
- Creating wireframes, user flows, user stories and interaction design specifications to communicate intended changes, helping users find and purchase products more intuitively.
- Collaborating with UI visual designers as well as performing UI design for certain deliverables.
- Working closely with cross functional agile team in a fast paced environment to identify user interaction and minimal viable product, while fostering open and collaborative team interaction.
- Worked on the user experience for virtually every area of the website to input to long-term roadmap: Homepages, Category Pages, Product Listing Pages, Product Detail Pages, Checkout, Search, Menu, My Account / Support, Email, etc, – in addition to retail initiatives.
Other Initiatives
- Designing conceptual storyboards for retail channel and strategic roadmap options.
- Developing a recipe book for UX team to quickly gain quantitative and qualitative user insights.
- Analyzing and communicating qualitative and quantitative research (including A/B testing) to guide business decisions and drive change.
- Communicating need for usage and availability of analytics reporting (e.g. conversion funnel) which would assist the whole business.
- Constantly evaluating and working to improve key metrics such as conversion and customer retention.
- Providing UX direction for a large Adobe Experience Manager CMS integration project.
- Development of interaction Design Document (IDD) and functional specifications (including authoring requirements).
- Presenting to and influencing senior management at both strategic and tactical levels.
- UX evangelism and recognized benefit of UX within company was achieved by collaborating and co-creation of improved user journeys together with key stakeholders.
- UX mentorship of junior members within the design team who were largely focused on UI visual design.
- Performing Best Practice Analysis of major USA eCommerce companies.
- Gap Analysis of Shoes.com / Online Shoes.com with these companies.
- Documenting recommendations from UX perspective for future product roadmap.
Software: Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite, Invision, Maximizer (A/B test tool), Adobe Experience Manager CMS, Omniture, Google Analytics.
Key skills used on project: Interaction Design, Information Architecture, Stakeholder management, UX Design, UX Strategy, Service Design.
Above: Cross channel journey sample
Above: Journey user insight sample
Above: User insight recipe book sample
Above: User insight recipe book sample
Above: Retail experience storyboard sample
Above: Interaction Design Document sample
Above: Interaction Design Document sample
Above: Interaction Design Document sample
Above: Interaction Design Document sample
Above: Interaction Design Document sample
Above: Interaction Design Document sample
Above: Interaction Design Document sample
Above: Interaction Design Document sample
Above: Interaction Design Document sample
Above: Interaction Design Document sample
Above: Interaction Design Document sample
Above: Interaction Design Document sample
Above: Interaction Design Document sample
Above: Retail experience storyboard sample
Above: Retail experience storyboard sample
Above: Retail experience storyboard sample
Above: Retail experience storyboard sample
Above: Retail Customer Journey sample
Above: Journey mapping sample
Above: Wireframes sample
Above: Authoring control design sample
About Shoes.com
Shoes.com WAS ranked the top performing Canadian-owned eCommerce company. It was also named the 10th top performing eCommerce company in North America and the 5th top performing eCommerce company in the Apparel and Accessories category. (Internet Retailer’s 2016 Top 500 Guide.) The Shoes.com Domain name is currently owned by walmart
Colleagues at Shoes.com
Stephen Williams
Director of Analytics
Stephen and I worked together at shoes.com. I always felt incredibly confident about projects that he was involved with from a UX perspective because of the thoughtfulness he put in to everything and the resultant quality of the output he delivered. He demonstrated a keen understanding of customer interests, preferences, and behaviors, and could interpret and decipher the insights that went into competitive experiences he was working on. Last, he was very open to new insights and datapoints to shape his work, and he was a good partner at framing the business problem he was trying to solve so that my analytics team and I could address.
Albert Chong
Director of Acquisition
Stephen’s understanding of UX is very strong and I have been lucky to work alongside with him on several large projects. His data-driven nature to help guide his work can be a large asset to any organization. I can highly recommend him as an UX Architect.
Jon Maltby
Creative Director
Stephen is a pro. He’s a well rounded UX veteran who can aim for blue sky with C-level stakeholders or get dirty in the weeds leading junior teams. Stephen is great at identifying opportunities and delivering solutions quickly. I value Stephen’s UX rigour combined with his ability to understand the business landscape to bring more context to his work. Very much looking forward to working with Stephen soon.
Cara Davies
UX/UI Designer
Having worked closely with Stephen Issac for nearly 6 months at SHOES.com I can attest to him being a tremendous asset to our UX team. Stephen joined our team to help with the on-boarding of a new CMS platform for SHOEme.ca, SHOES.com and Onlineshoes.com. He dove into the project head first, initially helping to define our guest journeys through user personas and scenarios. Stephen made vast improvements to the core experience of all three sites by recommending designs to A/B test to improve site engagement and conversion and by influencing stakeholders on key UX decisions. He also worked on an extensive interactive design document which outlines certain features and functionality from all three sites, helping to bridge the gap between design and development internally and with the systems integrator. Though not in his title, he took on a product management aspect as well – making sure the product was aligned with the tight timelines and goals of the project overall.
Aside from his talent and strong work ethic, Stephen is an all around stand up guy – he is always positive and was a mentor to everyone on the team. I would jump at the opportunity to work with him again!
Emily Arsenault
UX/UI Designer
Stephen is a very unique and dependable individual who I’ve had the pleasure of working with recently. Being a “newbie” at a large company can always be intimidating, and I was more than thankful that I had someone like Stephen to mentor and guide me in the right direction. Not only did he have the patience of listening to and answering all of my questions, but I always received a response that was innovative and personable. I am thankful for this because being encouraged to think outside of the box has only helped me to become stronger in my profession. On top of being personable, Stephen’s understanding for UX design is extremely advance and is reflected across all of his work. I would be more than happy to work with Stephen again in the future as his devotion and top notch quality work is something that makes for an outstanding colleague.
Cynthia Lee
Solutions Architect
Stephen is a highly versatile UX architect and designer. He can get extremely detailed, providing mocks and the exact colour hexcodes for developers, yet think in both tactical and strategical terms when coming up with customer journeys. He is also very thorough, owning his role in the project from beginning to end. He does research on industry best practices, and thinks like a product owner so that things like success metrics aren’t missed. When he communicates, he’s always honest, open-minded, and diplomatic. I truly appreciated these qualities, especially when he’s pointing out gaps.
I’ll miss working with Stephen, and I hope that I get a chance to in the future, when we both can do things fully.
Zach Rains
Senior Marketing & Web Analyst
I had the pleasure of working with Stephen on redesigning many pages types and multiple page elements across multiple web properties at SHOES.com.
Stephen is a clear thinker who partners well with other stakeholder. Stephen asks terrific questions and is not afraid to dive into the details of the numbers to truly understand user behavior. In his role as UX architect, I was consistently impressed with Stephen’s focus on users. Stephen is very diligent and truly understands the difference between formulating a hypothesis and conducting tests to draw conclusions.
Stephen is also an excellent communicator who consistently closes loops and ensures project teams are all up to speed with the latest changes and iterations.
I consider myself fortunate to work with Stephen, and look forward to any opportunity to work together again.
Alysha Adcock
Merchandiser
Stephen was fantastic to work with; he always covered his bases and made sure that if anyone had questions, there was sufficient information presented to satisfy the request. He is thorough, efficient, and a hard worker who is an asset to any team.
Michael Robertson
Director of Creative Services
Stephen’s analysis, and the rigour that he brought to his wireframes, made the execution of our projects much more clinical.
He was somehow able to present complex ideas and behaviours into a logical, easily digestible format.
He was a pleasure to work with (and took ribbing about his South African accent good-naturedly).
Martin Bath
Graphic Designer
Stephen has an exceptional knowledge of UX. While working together he would always provide great advice and helpful design critique without hesitation. He was always positive and a great mentor to those around him. I witnessed Stephen’s competence not only in UX but also as a leader to his team and an articulate and informative contributor to the creative team as a whole. He was a pleasure to work with and I would be thrilled to work alongside him again.
Norman Chan
Email Marketing Manager
I worked with Stephen at SHOES.com. I know him for being a great team player and communicator. He has meticulous attention to detail and is knowledgeable with eCommerce UX architect. I would recommend him for any future work.
Geoff Henshaw
Vice President of Marketing
I would without hesitation recommend Stephen Isaac for any senior UX architecture or product design roles.
Stephen brought broad u/x experience to SDC and added high value (intellect and productivity) to any project he was asked to contribute too – this ranged from bricks and mortar to online.
In addition to talent Stephen was a strong contributor to culture and excellent mentor to juniors on the team.