Creative Technology's Sound Blaster sound card sparked the multimedia era of the PC in the 1990s and became a de facto standard for sound cards in PCs for many years. In addition to the design, manufacture and distribution of digitized sound and video boards, Creative also makes personal digital entertainment products.
Details
Designed in 2012
e-commerce website
Services
User experience audit
Information architecture
Interaction design
Art direction
Visual interface design
Credits
Mike Chen
Lee Jun Lin
Digital Refresh
Creative’s then-current ecommerce website had been around for more than a decade and its age was showing. Besides a dated look and feel, there were also usability issues that were hindering navigation. In terms of site architecture, the online store was split from the product information pages. In addition, each product line had its own micro-site, each with a unique design. Although online sales were still strong in the European and North American markets, Creative risked losing business as conversion rates decreased. An overhaul was needed.
Getting Creative
We sat down together with the stakeholders to understand their goals for the revamp and work out a strategy together for the website. We found out that besides being an online storefront, the website also had to fulfill marketing and branding functions. These conversations with the stakeholders helped us map out what we wanted to achieve and what needed to be done.
User Experience Audit
The first thing we helped out with was the information architecture. We reorganized the website and made recommendations about product categories. This was followed by a discussion with the team regarding the data from the analytics they had already installed on their site. From there, we identified the pain points, and conducted a heuristic evaluation of the key drop-off points. This gave us a really good idea about which parts of the website needed improvement and which could be kept.
Interaction Design
A key component was the shopping cart and checkout process. We completely streamlined the checkout process to make it as easy as possible for Creative’s customers to complete their purchase.
Visual Interface Design
We completely reimagined Creative’s online presence. The art direction we provided informed the look and feel of all Creative sites worldwide
What We Learned
Collaborative Client Relationship
We took the time to build a collaborative relationship with the client, working as a team to find answers to the problems we were solving. This approach helped to foster trust and momentum when it came to execution.
Working with the client as opposed to working for the client results in better work
