Sherry’s Art-a-rama

Setting the scene.

Sherry’s Art-a-rama has been a cherished local art store in Somerville, MA, since 1982. Located in the heart of Union Square, they’re proud to be a part of their dynamic community.

Customers of Sherry’s Art-a-rama range from residents to small businesses, and they seek to connect with their city by employing local people and providing top-notch customer service. They source from a variety of suppliers to offer customers the best range of products at the most competitive prices.

After the pandemic began, they thought it was an opportunity to modernize and optimize by launching an e-commerce site. However, shortly after its launch, they saw plenty of website visitors, yet few completed purchases.

Sherry’s Art-a-rama needed a website that showcased their products while maintaining their brand image of “small shop” meets excellent customer service.

The Problem: The e-commerce site for Sherry’s Art-a-rama has lots of visitors, but struggles with keeping potential customers on the site to make a purchase. 

Sherry’s Art-a-rama can greatly improve eCommerce purchase rates by updating the site with a modern look and feel, optimizing the checkout flow and design, and building trust in the online experience by including product reviews and accessible customer service.

For market research, I analyzed competitors such as Michael’s, Amazon, and Staples, as well as stores like Gather Here that are smaller and local to the area. 

I also researched indirect competitors that were titans in the arena of e-commerce, such as Best Buy and Target. I wanted to get a sense of how these companies organized their information, what their experience was like, similarities and differences between them, what seemed to work well and what could possibly be improved upon. 

“I don’t like amazon — I like the convenience”

“It’s fun to picture what you’re going to make and then go find products to make that idea a reality.”

Meet Max & Jen

Personas
The initial research helped me to develop two personas to represent my target users: Max, a high school art teacher and local artist, and Jenn, a mother of two and owner of a local daycare.  Throughout the project, I would return to these personas to keep my user’s goals, motivations, and pain points at the forefront of my design decisions.

Turning insights into ideas.

At this stage, I did a card sort of products to start developing a sitemap and navigational schema. Next, I identified feature priorities based on my research and created two relevant user flows for key site functionalities. Then, I did a series of sketches to begin mapping out the design and flow of these features and leveraged those for low-fi wireframes.

User Flows

For the prototype, I wanted to focus on the following features to deliver an MVP with my given project timeline:

• Customer incentives: free shipping hurdles, member rewards, and prominent discounts
• Logical organization of product categories with multiple entry points
• Product filters and site breadcrumbs
• Product pages with Q&A and customer reviews
• Straightforward, user-friendly checkout experience
• Accessible customer service

Branding & Design Systems

Before I transitioned to a high-fidelity prototype, I worked on the look, feel, and design systems. There was no branding in place, so I had full reign over to develop it for this project.

Keeping in mind that art supply stores often feel dated or boring, I wanted to set Sherry’s Art-a-rama apart from the competition by giving them a fresh, modern vibe but with a retro spin to honor that they’ve been around since the early 80s. I wanted colors that were friendly, earthy, and artsy.

• Scaling down the header navigation
• Changing the language for the “account” section CTAs
• Adding hyperlink CTAs for clearer sign up process
• Bumped up opt-in prompts for better legibility

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