Elevating the Shopping Experience Through New Design Studio
Overview
Homemakers Furniture is known for having the best priced furniture in Iowa, but many customers were unaware that the company also offered higher-end, customizable furniture. I helped design and develop the digital experience that introduced customers to a brand new design service that focused on premium offerings. I ensured alignment with business goals, user needs, and accessibility with the existing website.
Through collaboration with analytics, marketing, merchandising, research, and sales teams, we launched a new digital entry point that helped customers discover premium experience and a new way to connect with in-store design expertise.
The Challenge
Customers who seek personalized design guidance and a premium shopping experience often struggled with frustration and uncertainty about whether Homemakers could meet their design needs. This results in lost conversion opportunities with an affluent audience.
Timeline
May 2024 – October 2024
Role
UX/UI Designer
Contributions
Web Design Implementation
HTML/CSS
Collaborators
Analytics
Marketing
Merchandising
Research
Sales
Developers
Stakeholders
Opportunities & Goals
- Create sophisticated shopping experience that appeals to affluent customers to increase engagement and conversion rate.
- Introduce free room planning service that helps with visualizing spaces and making confidence purchasing decisions.
- Increase awareness through digital channels while driving revenue growth with affluent customers.
PROBLEM TO SOLVE
The shopping experience doesn't offer any design services, resulting in low engagement and missed conversion opportunities from affluent customers.
RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
Gathering Insights
Customer service feedback, competitive analysis, and analytics revealed consistent themes among affluent customers seeking premium products and services, highlighting gaps in how Homemakers was meeting their expectations. This was a clear opportunity to better align the brand experience with the expectations, behaviors, and purchase intent of affluent customers.
KEY INSIGHT
Disconnected Experience
The experience treats all products and users similarly, failing to support any confused customers looking for premium design services.
KEY INSIGHT
Low Engagement
Affluent customers had shorter session durations and lower conversion rates in-store and online.
KEY INSIGHT
Weak Presence
Generic experience with higher-end products, and we offered no design services when compared to our competitors.
HOW MIGHT WE
How might we create a more connected, tailored and elevated shopping experience that better engages and converts affluent customers?
IDEATION & ITERATION
Using Insights to Drive Decisions
The team explored ways to introduce a more guided, premium experience without overhauling the entire site for a design services. While the brand designer focused on the branding and integration into the in-store experience, I focused on the website experience to define key flows and identified entry points for discoverability of the new design services.
Foundational Artifacts
I developed a set of foundational artifacts to guide early decision-making. The information architecture defined where users would discover the design services, competitive analysis highlighted gaps across the market, and a prioritization matrix helped focus on high-impact opportunities within MVP constraints.
FINAL DESIGN
The Experience Delivered
IMPACT
The Results
830+ Bookings
scheduled for in-store appointments in Q4 2024 – Q1 2026
$2.0M+
in attributed revenue in Q4 2024 – Q1 2026
49k+ Page Visits
across all program pages within first 6 months
New Experience
supports customer expectations and market growth
What I Learned From This Project
Designing Beyond the Product
This project pushed me to think beyond traditional ecommerce patterns of product discovery and had me considering how offering different services can build confidence in potential customers.
Importance of Discoverability
A key realization was that even a well-designed experience fails if users never find it. It's just as critical to define where users find the design services as it is to create the pieces that bring it together.
Balancing Business with Practicality
There was a strong desire to elevate this experience above the rest of the brand, but not all ideas and frontend animations were feasible within the current site design. I identified what could be delivered on the website initially versus what should be phased later on.
© 2026 Noah Heuton