Overview

I took on this redesign challenge as a way to dive deeper into my understanding of the user experience by examining my own experience through Kinokuniya's website, a bookstore that I love to visit.

Duration: Jan 2021 (one week)
Role: UX/UI Designer in a team of one
Category: Redesign

The Goal

What I hoped to accomplish with my redesign was to improve the customer journey by making navigating and shopping easier through concepts of familiarity. I wanted to apply commonly seen e-commerce concepts and bookstore designs to the website. I worked to maintain the original image Kinokuniya had so past customers would also be able to process the changes quickly and improve their browsing experience.

Notes

I was able to learn a lot from studying the features and pages of other e-commerce sites like Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, and Powell's. What made the experience of the other sites enjoyable was that they made it very easy to add to cart, read about the product, and navigate pages, all in a very intuitive way.

Wireframe

Original

I began the process by creating placeholder designs for how the original website was laid out. This made the re-designing process smoother as I was able to play with different layout configurations easily.

Redesigned

Original product page

Final

By adding a "quick add" action, it makes it more convenient for the customer to add items to the cart and wishlist--helps increase sales!

Original drop down menu

The original website had a rather slow drop down animation, so
with the new mega menu, I would not only like the information to be
presented more clearly, but also to get rid of the animations and make
the changes in tab easier on the eyes when hovering over the navigation.

Mega menu fix