THE CONTEXT —

Founded by The OG of Hollywood Medical Spas, Kate Somerville Skincare exists because of one woman’s belief that radiant + healthy skin is everyone’s right.

We worked with Kate and her team at Unilever to rethink their ecommerce site from the ground up, ensuring every detail of the brand, spa experience and product formulation came to life through a clear, modern, elevated digital experience.

TECHNOLOGY PLATFORMS  —

Shopify Plus
Klayvio
Yotpo
Ordergroove
Revieve 

"Pattern has been nothing less than a perfect partner. I think that I can speak for all of us when I say that it was an absolute pleasure working with everyone on your team, and we are thrilled that people are finally able to see your work."

Dan Nykolayko
Director of Digital Content
Met Club & Metallica.com

RESEARCH FINDINGS AND CONTENT STRATEGY —

Our first phase of work took us deep into UX & customer research to define the most critical opportunities, followed by a robust content strategy phase with the goals of establishing messaging heirarchy for key brand storylines and integrating them into a more seamless customer purchase journey. We uncovered some really interesting findings that drove our redesign ambitions and put them in context for where the Kate Somerville brand wanted to go.

01. Expectations Matter
Users made clear that many of the key moments on-site were not meeting their expectations. This feedback was consistent across functional moments like filtering, wayfinding moments like category navigation, brand moments like the disconnected look of the site vs. the packaging, and product education moments throughout the journey.

02. Unclear Perceptions & Confusion 
When we engaged in direct customer research and interviews, a major theme emerged across customer types. Non-current customers had unclear perceptions of the Kate Somerville brand, products, and services, while current customers, while current customers had issues with inconsistent design and content patterns creating a lack of cohesion and clarity. Both customer groups mentioned that the lack of a more intentional introduction to Kate Somerville - the person - throughout the website creates confusion.

03. On-Site Education Pays Off
With social media serving as the primary means of initial skin care education, customers were hungry for more in depth product and use case education moments on site. In particular, Kate Somerville's customer base craved product-level education that focused on solutions for their skin issues, instead of just ingredients.

EXPERIENCE DESIGN APPROACH —

After locking in on a content strategy north star, our design team took the learnings from our UX and customer research and explored various way to weave the right narrative of story, context, results, personality and functionality into the new Kate Somerville site.

We landed on a combination of elegance, sophistication and curation punctuated with a wink & nod to the story and personality of Kate Somerville and the knowledge and clout that comes with her name.

WHAT WE DID —

Customer Research
Stakeholder Interviews
UX Research
Content Strategy
UX Design for Shopify Plus
Visual & UI Design for Shopify Plus
Quiz & Bundle Builder
Interaction & Motion Design

PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATION & EDUCATION —

Beauty and skincare is an exceptionally crowded and competitive space. Our UX design system embraced a balanced mix of editorial, educational and shoppable components to ensure product differentiators and results are a key part of every customer journey.

CONTENT THAT DRIVES COMMERCE —

In mapping content strategy objectives to ecommerce touchpoints and user journeys, we were able to distill the visual design down to the sophisticated essentials, creating space for visual vibrancy through photography, video and 3D renderings wrapped in subtle and immersive interactions.

We applied these principles across pages to drive outcomes in areas such as product discovery opportunities, mission and brand values reinforcement, community highlights, founder features, and product benefits articulation — with a strong focus on mobile-first UX.

PERSONALIZATION, QUIZZES, ROUTINES BUILDERS & BUNDLES—

Utilizing Revieve's quiz & personalization technology, we were able to craft a flow that solves many of Kate Somerville's customers product needs while at the same time providing support, direction and meaning around the questions being asked and the reasons why.

The quiz results are designed to meet customers where they are and provde additional content to explore, while also making smart, shoppable recommendations for individual products as well as sets and bundles.

The global navigation and in-page visual navigation UX plays a major role in priming customers to engage and complete the quiz, driving significantly higher conversion rates.

THE SPA EXPERIENCE & FOUNDER STORY — 

The Kate Somerville Clinic in Los Angeles is a massively important part of the overall origin story and brand experience. Additionally, the Kate Somerville brand does a significant amount of revenue at the clinic via digital bookings on the web site.

Our design system seamlessly integrates physical with digital, giving customers ways to explore Kate Somerville's luxurious and innovative environment, learn in detail about the treatments, and book frictionlessly within the eCommerce site.  

WE'D LOVE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT YOU—

Let's explore new ways of working together. Get in touch and start your next project with us today.

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