OVERVIEW
Goldmine Vintage is Denver’s largest purveyor of vintage clothing and accessories. It’s owned by a husband-wife team who hand-select the diverse inventory, often traveling across the country to source unique clothes and accessories for the store. Despite being a staple in the Denver vintage scene for over 11 years, Goldmine vintage does not have a functioning e-commerce site.
Brief: on-spec redesign for a responsive e-commerce website
My Role: user research | wireframes | prototypes | user testing | mockups
Scope: team of 1 | duration of 2 weeks
Tools: Sketch | Invision | Zeplin
DIGGING IN
In my initial research, it immediately became clear that Goldmine Vintage is a touchstone in the Denver vintage community. Their store has glowing online reviews from both local thrifters and out-of-state visitors who often make Goldmine Vintage a destination on trips.
Could Goldmine Vintage capitalize on their reputation and expand their business beyond the bounds of Colorado?
In order to best design an e-commerce website for Goldmine Vintage, I needed to understand both the local thrift community as well as users who shop online.
I conducted a mix of interviews aimed at fleshing out the frustrations and needs of these distinct user types.
CRATE DIGGERS AND ONLINE SHOPPERS
INTERVIEW INSIGHTS
I created an affinity map based on the responses from eight user interviews and two distinct types of shoppers emerged:
Users whose shopping habits are determined by lifestyle and values
Users whose shopping habits are determined by convenience and flexibility
After defining personas based on key insights from research, I started with sketches to explore features and a layout that would accommodate both types of users.
For The Lifestylist: browsing, imagery, and recreating the feel of a thrifting experience was the focus for design.
For the Queen of Convenience: easy access to information on shipping, returns, and item condition would be made a priority.
IDEATION
I started with mobile to get a feel for how this site would look on the small screen:
Once I had a rough idea for the site’s mobile layout, I moved on to desktop sketches:
CLEANING OUT THE CLOSET
After initial ideation, I performed to closed card sort to dial in the site’s information architecture. A store like Goldmine Vintage is tricky because they have a huge breadth of inventory. They have everything from vintage baby clothes to outlandish costumes, with a mountain of flannel and trucker hats in between. The card sort helped me determine what kind of filters to incorporate on the search results page, and how to organize the categories for primary navigation and dropdown menus.
WIREFRAMES
USER FLOWS
Using these initial wireframes I created an InVision prototype and tested out two user flows:
TIME TO REFINE
In my first round of wireframes I featured a search bar front and center. During testing it seemed distracting and out of place so I removed the search bar and added a more subtle icon.
The home page was made intentionally image-heavy to create a ‘browsy’ thrift store feel, but in the wireframes it felt a little too close and cluttered.
For mockups, I wanted to create a little more breathing room. I tried to leverage whitespace and more distinguished hierarchy of content.
I changed the font pairings (and sizing) to be more in line with a clean, elegant feel for the site.
DESKTOP
MOBILE
TAKEAWAYS
There are a lot of logistical difficulties in creating a functioning e-commerce website for a store like Goldmine Vintage.
Not only is their inventory incredibly diverse, but most items are one of a kind. In order to sell online you would likely have to create and manage a separate inventory to avoid confusion.
Based on a competitive analysis and research surrounding the online vintage market, there is considerable potential for Goldmine Vintage to capture a much larger customer base with an e-commerce site.