Designing a Modern Web Store
Modernizing Edge Web Store to improve business and end user outcomes.
Context
The Edge Web Store had become antiquated in terms of both functionality and appearance. Users found it difficult to locate what they needed, and numerous outdated features were no longer applicable or utilized. This led to negative perceptions of the product and a loss of users. This situation presented an opportunity to spearhead an initiative to modernize, simplify, and improve the overall store experience. An updated design was necessary, even though it hadn't been clearly expressed or brought up within the team yet. Considering the significant investment in this project, it was essential to inspire and involve stakeholders to secure their support and enthusiasm.
Research
To gain a thorough understanding of the space, we conducted an extensive study and analysis of similar and comparable products in the market, such as the Google Chrome Store, Microsoft Store, Apple Store, Spotify, and others. We also explored the consumer-creator flywheel within these ecosystems to identify areas where we were lagging and needed to focus our efforts. Key insights were identified, prioritized, and documented to ensure the project's sustainability in the long term while remaining actionable in the short term.
A few of the key insights that informed the design phase included:
Cross platform
User education, awareness and evaluation outside of the store
Personalization
Importance of first time experience completing a high value task
Quality of items impacts trust impacts repeated usage
Aesthetics play a key role in item selection
Instant evaluation and decision making is inevitable
First impression
Transparency
Vision
Crafting a product vision necessitated thorough exploration. We initiated this process by examining design patterns and principles from comparable and analogous products in the market, which aided us in creating our own design principles. Concurrently, the team engaged in visual and information architecture (IA) explorations. I had empowered and guided the team to design vision that was centered on boosting user delight and satisfaction, free from the limitations of implementation challenges.
Design principles:
Focus on speed and efficiency
Build trust through transparency
Connect creators with consumers
Modern, simple and clean aesthetics
The new design underwent SBS testing, with over 70% of users favoring it over the previous version. A minor percentage of users expressed a desire for a simpler design overall. This feedback was considered, and adjustments were made to simplify the design while aligning it with the Edge design system.
Future
“No store” store
Personalisation. Personalisation. Personalisation.
On-demand
Multi-device
The project reached a turning point when a prototype was created, accompanied by a sizzle video that clearly presented the vision to senior leadership and stakeholders. This presentation prompted the leadership team to acknowledge the necessity of investing in this area and to commend the design work. Consequently, the required investment was allocated to execute the solution.
Execution
To execute this comprehensive redesign, we undertook two critical steps. Initially, we addressed engineering constraints and ensured alignment with existing Microsoft Edge design patterns. Subsequently, we crafted a phased rollout plan that carefully balanced engineering capacity, shipping speed, user satisfaction, and a seamless transition across different phases of the user interface. The resulting design was even simpler and clearer than the original concept. Additionally, we developed phase-specific designs for each key screen to facilitate a smooth process.
Shipping these experiences in small, incremental parts and conducting experiments was essential to ensure that none of the guardrail metrics regressed. This necessitated further breaking down the project to test and implement minor changes. For instance, the first shipping candidate included updates solely to the store header and search suggestions, enabling us to evaluate their impact before proceeding.
Impact
The project is ongoing and presently in the first phase of implementation. Initial experiments have demonstrated notable improvements in search usage, installation rates, and installation speed. Interestingly, the experiments also uncovered that users with smaller screen resolutions had difficulty finding the search feature in its new design. We promptly resolved this issue with a design intervention. These outcomes are very promising, and the team is on schedule to deliver the full store redesign by mid to late 2025.
