Westminster Theological Seminary’s Bookstore is one of the leading bookstores that specializes in religious literature on the Christian faith.
— Visit Site
Westminster Theological Seminary’s Bookstore (WTSBooks) is a trusted destination for theological literature, offering a carefully curated selection of books and high-quality packaging for every order. I was the designer who helped redesign their eCommerce site. Our goal was to optimize the purchase flow and refresh the brand to give the bookstore a modern look.
To improve the purchase flow, I conducted interviews with the bookstore's customers. These interviews allowed me to gather valuable insights regarding their pain points, preferred calls to action, browsing habits, popular products, checkout experience, and overall perception of the brand. By consolidating and analyzing these findings, I gained valuable insights into areas such as product categories and organization, page structures, callouts, and best practices to enhance the site's usability and user experience. These insights guided the optimization efforts to create a more seamless and intuitive purchase flow for customers.
During the interviews with their customers, one particularly interesting insight emerged: customers expressed a high level of trust and confidence in religious thought-leaders and what they recommend. This finding highlighted the importance of incorporating product testimonials and recommendations from these thought-leaders. By featuring these testimonials prominently on the website, we aimed to provide valuable reassurance and guidance to customers, helping them make informed decisions about what books to purchase.
With this insight, we integrated thought-leaders’ recommendations into key touch points within the customer flow. In the product listings view, endorsed books are easily identifiable with a gold star icon accompanied by the label "Leader Recommended." On the product page, we prominently showcased the testimonials along with a brief description about the thought-leader to establish credibility and build trust with the customers.
We made several improvements to the information architecture, including reorganizing the product categories, to make it easier for users to navigate from the product listings to the product pages. Other improvements included adding product quick views, customer reviews, author biographies, image galleries, and one-page checkout to create a smooth and enjoyable user experience from product discovery to making a purchase.
As part of the new design direction, I worked on updating WTSBooks' logo to align with the new visual aesthetic. The goal was to create a logo that was not only visually appealing but also optimized for mobile devices. The classic book icon, which is synonymous with WTSBooks, remained a prominent element in the logo. To enhance its visual connection to religious literature, I added a ribbon bookmark as a frame around the book icon. The refined logo with its improved visual connection to religious literature would help reinforce the brand identity and resonate with the target audience.
The redesign of WTSBooks' eCommerce site brought significant improvements to the overall customer experience while capturing the essence of the new brand. By delving into the motivations of WTSBooks' customers, we gained valuable insights into their preferences and pain points, allowing us to create a more user-centric eCommerce site that effectively communicated its value and generated more sales.
