Ralph Lauren Sitelets

Microsites coasting on brand recognition got a UX facelift and some major unexpected benefits

  • How might we consider and leverage the user’s experience in these sitelets so they are high-converters and ambassadors of the Ralph Lauren brand.

  • KPI Priority #1 was conversion rate, which fell below the industry standard of 1.9% based on the browsing nature of the sitelets.

    Priority #2 was maintaining the innovative standards of the Ralph Lauren brand while constrained by Macy's and other's CMS and technical constraints.

  • I was the sole UX/UI Designer on a team of Graphic Designers and Marketers. Much of this process was also educational for the entire team to understand user’s needs.

Discover & Define

The first step was to understand the starting point so we could leverage areas of opportunity. I pulled together all aspects of the experience to see the bird’s eye view, such as onsite and offsite search queries, media drivers, Core Web Vital performance, and ADA compliance.

Heuristic Evaluation • Analytics Ingestion • Presentations to Stakeholders

Design & Deliver

After having a playbook of learnings, I siphoned those into our workflow piece-by-piece. Starting with working upstream with the brand and campaign teams to request specific assets at photoshoots, to opening (virtual) doors with the creative teams to collaborate on layouts together, to pulling in the wholesale dev teams before handoff to identify opportunities, and finally to share successful patterns back to the global design.

The wireframes represent a shift in approach to the microsites— one from borrowing approved layouts to driving decisions.

Wireframe • Prototype • Updated Handoff System

Final Impact

During Discovery, I unearthed many UX flaws that had been flying under the radar, such as a total lack of alt text on the entire sitelet. The team rallied behind ADA compliance and made this a priority for the next refresh.

Careful monitoring to other KPIs that are cousins of CV also unearthed some surprising causes, such as one carousel-heavy sitelet that had 87% of its engagements merely clicking through those carousels. I decided to streamline the content by removing carousels and encourage the users to click into the categories and convert.

The final impact is a Ralph Lauren team that is better educated on user experience, ADA compliance, and KPI tracking that will inevitably boost that conversation rate.

On a larger scale, Macy’s and Bloomingdales are extremely happy with the traffic these sitelets garner and are holding them as the golden standard for any additional partners who do the same.

Have you ever wanted your blinds to just… magically open?

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