Empress Effects Website Redesign

OVERVIEW

In January 2024 I was tasked with redesigning and redeveloping the Empress Effects website. The project had a limited budget and expected completion date of September 2024. 

CONSIDERATIONS/CONSTRAINTS

  • There were no prior company brand or marketing guidelines set

  • Each product had already been giving its own micro "brand" that needed to be upheld

  • The website needed to stay on Shopify

  • New pages/templates were to be made live as they were completed

  • Various services and domains were used, connected via redirects

Old Product Page

New Product Page

PROTOTYPING & PUBLISHING

In order to meet deadline requirements, we brought on an external developer to handle coding out the site and I worked on the design. After mocking them up in Figma, my prototypes were built as hidden pages in Shopify and tested by employees at Empress before being published. 

As our updates needed to be made live as we completed them, we developed a product roadmap that focused first on updating the pages that offered the most customer benefit.

KEY IMPROVEMENTS

  • Switching from page-specific custom HTML to Metaobject fields allowed for a myriad of improvements. Updating the site can now be done by any employee and no longer requires custom CSS solutions to match branding guidelines

  • Customer experience was improved by moving all content that was hosted on other sites to the main Empress site. Share buttons were added for Empress’ support team to provide exceptional customer service

  • The Homepage banner can now be scheduled, eliminating the need for employees to work on holidays to update the store for sales

Homepage Manager

Support Articles