Sacred Savage Art-
A website redesign
When starting an art business 2 years ago, I had zero experience in website building or design. Through a lot of trial and error, I was able to create some pretty decent websites, but even at their best, they lacked empathy for my users. Let me take you through how I reimagined a website for Sacred Savage Art, but this time centered around the people that make my business great!
Overview
The goal for the redesign of my art website was to combine my preexisting artistic skills and passion, with my newly found love for UX/UI to create a seamless user centered design and experience. I designed this website for use with desktop, but I do further plan to iterate and include a mobile view option. I had one month to complete this project so time was limited.
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Summary
The motivation behind redesigning the Sacred Savage Art website was to create an experience that addressed the wants and need of both my current clients and potential future ones. Instead of creating a website based off of just my wants and needs, I focused this design specifically around my users.
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Roles & Responsibilities
Conduct a competitive analysis, survey, user research and testing. Create user intuitive wireframes based on research and sketches. Iterate on designs from feedback recieved during user testing. Collaborate to design and develop intuitive and user friendly website.
Users & Audience
I designed the Sacred Savage Art website for anyone who enjoys buying art. My target audience is a large demographic but usually between the ages of 20-45. Consists of both men and women but a slightly larger female audience.
Through the last couple years of running my business, I've learned a lot about my audience. Users want to be able to easily brows and purchase available products, read more about me and my company, as well as commission custom pieces of artwork. Through this redesign, I was able to create a fun and engaging "About Me" page, clearly display products and product information, as well as create a custom artwork form that can be easily submitted online.
Solutions
Competitive Analysis
After establishing my target audience, I performed a competitive analysis on a couple of existing artist websites. For this, I looked at the websites of Detour and Tahlia Stanton.
Tahlia Stanton Website
While touring Tahlia's website, I absolutely loved the bright and clean color palette. Her website was easy to navigate and had a consistent design across all pages.
I noticed a few things I thought could be areas for improvement. The website does not have a sticky navigation bar and there were a few accessibility issues as far as font color choices and sizes as well as inconsitent button sizes and designs.
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I am Detour Website
Detour's website was clean, simple, and modern. It had a nice add to cart feature which clearly displays the price of your current cart in a easy to see pop up box in the right hand corner. ​
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A few areas for improvement were that text is slightly on the smaller side which isn't great for people with vision impairments. It also has a video tab which takes you to a completely different website without warning the user that they are leaving Detour's site.
Persona: Shayla Hayes
Shayla is a local small business owner. She runs a record shop as she has a deep love and passion for music and art. She often works long hours, which doesn’t give her a ton of free time. She is always on the hunt for new and unique works of original art to add to her home or business. A lot of her shopping is online as her free time is very limited
Pain Points
Running a small business and working long hours makes Shayla's schedule often unpredictable and her free time very sparse. Most of her shopping comes from online because of lack of the time or energy to do much in-person shopping. She needs her online shopping experience to be very straight forward and free from error as she gets frustrated when things do not go smoothly.
Persona: Patrick G.
Patrick works in the Cyber Security industry and works remotely from the comfort of his home. Since he is frequently at home, he wants to add some color and personality to his home work space. He doesn't know a ton about purchasing art but wants to support an independent artist and own original works of art. He frequents social media and has been looking for artists that match the style he is looking for.
Pain Points
Patrick is looking for some original artwork for his home office, but is unfamiliar with the process of finding and purchasing artwork from independent artists. He isn't clear on sizes or dimensions that he will need for his wall space. He also strongly dislikes miscommunication or long reply times between responses.
User Stories
User stories are important because they allow us to understand the perspective of our end users.
For this project users needed to be able to learn more about my company, in order to build trust with first time purchases. They also needed the ability to submit commission requests online.
User Flows
User flows allow a designer to better understand how to achieve a minimum viable product or MVP for a typical user. With a simple flow and just a few clicks, users like Lindsey can get the information they need as easily as possible.
Sketching
Sketching allows a designer the opportunity to play with different design concepts before the more tedious wireframing process. It allows freedom to freely play with many ideas, before refining on a specific design.
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For this project, I did some crazy 8 sketching, to allow me to quickly sketch some possible page layouts for my website.
Wireframing
Wireframing allows me to create a skeletal structure of a possible design where I can visualize spatial relationships and determine placement of design elements.
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After a few different attempts, I was able to come up with a wireframe that met my MVP.
Usability Testing
Once I had established a wireframe that met my MVP, I did some in-person usability testing. Usability testing allows me to gather valuable feedback about the design and functionality of my website from my user's perspective.
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After receiving my feedback, I focused in on a couple main areas to make some improvements and iterations.
Branding
Now that I had a few areas of focus to make some further tweaks and iterations, I then started my brand development. Since my business has already been established, I already had a logo and color palette chosen. I simply tweaked the colors a bit from my original brand colors, to make the colors a more accessible hue.
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I then chose two websites from other artists that I particularly felt drawn to, because of simplicty, layout, and design.
Prototyping
For my high-fidelity wireframe, I included a few tweaks based on my previous usability testing. I created a product page to show a possibility of what it could look like when clicking on a product. I added additional information on the customs page, to help aid in filling out the customs form when trying to commission me for a piece of artwork.
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I then incorporated my branding, including typographical choices, color palette, and pictures.
Next Steps
I plan to make further iterations to my prototype based off of feedback from second round of usability testing, elaborate on additional features like shopping cart, a chat feature, and a reviews or testimonials section. I also plan to create a mobile view
Final Thoughts
Buying original art can be a fun and rewarding process, but lack of knowledge about certain aspects can create a lot of frustrations and confusion.
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With the new Sacred Savage Art website, I focused on making sure users could get as much information as easily and clearly as possible. They can learn more about me, browse available products as well as request custom artwork all in just a few simple steps. Everything they need to know is all at the tips of their fingers!
