2010-2012

Gilt Groupe

Senior Web Designer

My role at Gilt Groupe

I joined Gilt just as they started to diversify their overall business strategy. What started as the gamified flash sale destination for daily discounts on coveted luxury items had blossomed into a nationwide powerhouse. Gilt ventured into travel(Jetsetter), gourmet food(Gilt Taste), home furnishings(Gilt Home) and local deals curated for high taste customers in metropolitan cities across the country: Gilt City. It was there that I got my true understanding of both start-up culture, and the idea that end-users should be at the forefront of all digital product decision making. 

As Senior Web Designer at Gilt City, my responsibilities included collaboration with sales, product, engineering, and countless executive stakeholders to continuously iterate on the front-end experience. The marquis initiative during my tenure was the redesign of the Gilt City website for which I was the lead designer.

LOGIN

An elegant introduction

All Gilt properties were members-only hiding the entire experience behind a log-in wall. This encouraged subscriptions and increased the all to valuable e-mail base . As the primary gate of entry to the experience, I wanted to ensure that it conveyed both the essence of the brand and a taste of the type of experiences Gilt City had to offer. These backdrops were interchangeable and all conveyed the variety of offer categories across, fine dining, fitness, spa, etc.

HOMEPAGE

A curated experience

Immediately after login, users were taken to the main landing page of deals internally called the "mosaic", to browse offers. In addition to a fresher, more elevated visual language, as a baseline we decreased the size of offer tiles, immediately increasing the amount of offers seen at a glance. Further we integrated key updates to improve the browsing experience, including enhanced search and more robust filtering to assist users in finding the deal of their choice. 

< SLIDE TO REVEAL BEFORE & AFTER >

Details

Offer Tile

In-person focus groups and digital surveys revealed what elements of the deal influenced initial interest. I incorporated them into the offer tile to make them prominent without the extra click of going to the detail page.

Gilt-offer-tile-breakdown-1
Gilt-Filter-Dropdown

Details

Filters

Filtering from the home page made drilling down to the offer of your preference easy.a

OFFER DETAIL PAGE

Options on a silver platter

The offer detail page is a crucial part of any e-commerce funnel as it's where the user is presented with all the information they need to make their decision to convert. In the re-design, the goal was to cleanly and succinctly show all package options and additional details that affect purchase decision: price, what's included and location.

The curation aspect of all offers was tied into the "What We Love" section to illustrate the uniqueness of each offer, and why it was worthy of being on Gilt.

< SLIDE TO REVEAL BEFORE & AFTER >

RESULTS

7-10mm growth in sales

Product Performance

  • Improved user experience and content led to higher consumer engagement: a 43% increase in visits, and a 10-20% decrease in bounce rates
  • New cart paradigms resulted in an over-50% increase to order volume and units per transaction, leading to a $7-10mm annual sales increase
  • New shopping paths – including curated sales and gifting – drove repeat visits and grew baseline traffic, decreasing reliance on “door-buster” sales

Long-Term Benefits

  • Content guidelines focusing team on best-practice web strategies to reduce length and complexity remain today
  • Usability lab and testing practices put in place during project – including improvement of pre-launch testing with live prototypes – still inform projects
  • Novel daily deals UX paradigms inspired industry sites: Groupon, Thrillist & Rue La La
  • Engagement touched entire Gilt City team in redesign and re-branding effort, building confidence in digital product group and increasing morale

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© MattVandrick 2020