Bellwether
Bellwether is an effort to promote and sustain the rich heritage of Punjab in leather craft.
Conceived in 2016, Bellwether is a homegrown designer footwear and accessories label, rapidly growing in terms of popularity and presence worldwide. Their mission is to support the artisans, create something that is unique and contemporary and take the quintessential Punjabi Jutti to not only Punjabis but non-Punjabis as well.
Bellwether
September 2016 - May 2017
PLATFORMS: WEB, MOBILE WEB
I designed Bellwether's e-commerce website. As a UX designer, I led the creative vision for the brand and work closely with the founders to craft experiences for customers.
Since its inception, Instagram (@thebellwether) has been a terrific visual platform for Bellwether to raise brand awareness and reach the right audience to grow their business. The company has been taking orders online via emails, Whatsapp and Instagram. The company also participates in events/exhibitions nationwide to discover ways in which they can better serve their consumers.
However, as their business expanded, the task of taking orders over Instagram/Whatsapp/Calls became tedious and complex. It was difficult to take orders manually, establish credibility and serve all the customers demands. A website where users could browse, filter and buy collections of selected contemporary designer footwear was the dire need.
Increase customer acquisition by creating an e-commerce store
Address the current issues customers have while placing orders
Establish trust and credibility through online presence
Take the quintessential Indian Handicraft (Traditional Footwear) worldwide
I recruited existing Bellwether customers as well as Bellwether stakeholders to gain insights on their needs, motivations and frustrations to help shape the solution. Interviews conducted during Bellwether exhibitions were very helpful in understanding the user. I also did a content analysis of customer messages that were received on Instagram.
KEY FOCUS AREAS
Current System & Snippets from Instagram/Facebook.
I interviewed the end users to understand the challenges they face and how they see the website making a difference in optimizing pain areas.
“The inventory keeps on varying, forcing me to sift through a lot of content on the Instagram feed”
“How should I know the right size when there is no proper size chart?”
“Long chats with the seller before actually placing the order makes the entire process slow”
"I would have not been apprehensive making a purchase had there been a website."
"It is a tedious task to talk to each customer personally and take their orders via existing channels" - Bellwether Staff
Next, I was able to synthesize the research findings & create personas and user journeys. These formed a great foundation to move into feature ideation and prioritisation phase.
How might we help the user search, filter, purchase products online via the Bellwether website that results in fewer returns and satisfying purchases?
As I moved on to designing the interface, I wireframed all the UI screens and conducted the first round of user testing.
After gathering feedback, I started designing high fidelity prototypes by creating style guide for the user interface.
The objective was a brighter and fresher content-driven website that could engage the target audience.
A quick card sort was carried out to discover users’ mental models of landing on the Bellwether site. After that, I first designed the page with words, basically trying to answer “How would you tell a user what this page addresses?”
The concept of hastags was also implemented in the homepage.
Since the stakeholder wanted a responsive web design I built out some wireframes for the mobile version as well keeping in mind the focus.
I loved designing, especially for mobile, since I found it more challenging (mainly because of the small screen size)
The final prototype yielded successful task completions and positive feedback about the branding.
Bellwether has been an incredible learning experience. It's always exciting to see a product grow and change as we learn more about our customer's needs. I enjoyed researching and crafting a more delightful experience for the users. From getting my hands dirty with user research, developing user personas and flows, to designing visual comps and prototyping, I got the opportunity to experience the whole design process.
