Web Design

Web Design for E-Commerce

CONTEXT
Built a personalized music artist website and created a direct-to-fan distribution channel for selling music and merchandise.

CHALLENGE
How might we increase brand awareness and sell merch?

SOLUTION
I utilized design methods including building a persona, sitemap, mid-fidelity wireframes, and a final visual design.

The Process

How Might We Solve the Problem?

Secondary Research

User Statistics

Recruiting

Primary research

User Interviews

Primary Research

I interviewed five random men and five random women to understand their online shopping experiences. I recruited participants from Santa Monica College and shoppers at Amoeba Music record store in Hollywood, California. The goal was to learn how participants discover new music, artists, and online shopping expectations, and frustrations.

Persona

Understanding The User

User interviews help to build personas. After conducting user interviews, I extracted insights to identify user needs, goals, frustrations, and behavior patterns. I examined analytics from the client's YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram accounts to understand the audience demographics.
The data were synthesized into a user persona to help create understanding and empathy with the end user, allowing the design to reflect the user needs and expectations of this project.

Competitive Analysis

Which Musician Earns the Most from Merchandise?

When it comes to supporting your favorite musicians, there are many ways to show appreciation. You can follow them on social media to stay up to date on what’s going on or open your wallet to attend live performances. Fans also choose to get their hands on official merchandise.

Analysis Goals

Competitors

Harry Styles - US$22.9 million

Originally one of the five One Direction band members, Harry Styles has grown his solo music career since 2016. Styles has released two full studio albums, which have reached platinum and gold status in numerous countries around the world.

Topping the list, Styles earns up to US$22.9 million in estimated revenue from selling official merchandise. As of right now, he sells various clothing items, and accessories, including vinyl and cassettes.

While most of his merchandise is more understated, there’s also this Harry’s House Box Set which Includes a tee, sticker pack, and single Disc, in Softpak, with a 20-page booklet that sells for US$39.99.

Harry styles Box Set Currently Sales for US$39.99

Lady Gaga – US$15.8 million

Lady Gaga makes up an estimated US$15.8 million from her official merchandise. During the promotional period of her sixth album “Chromatica”, she sold soap bars with lyrics from Replay, which was part of the album’s tracklist.

This was an exciting marketing strategy and promoted hygiene during the early beginnings of Covid-19. From her website, Lady Gaga sells merch items such as her Love for Sale puzzles, champagne flutes, and notebooks with Love for Sale graphics.

Ariana Grande – US$10 million

Earning up to US$10 million from merch, Ariana Grande is the third highest earning from merch sales. Aside from printed apparel, this coffee mug sold on her website references the lyrics in her popular track 34+35.

The Voice Coach Ariana Grande has recently concluded a virtual tour titled Rift Tour hosted on the popular video game called Fortnight. She appeared at the concert from August 6-8, which was viewed by 78 million players worldwide.

Her earnings of $10 million from her merchandise are not surprising since a lot of young teens are idolizing her, and she's been one of the music icons for the young generation.

Sitemap

Structuring The Information

A sitemap represents web pages of the site and structures them to make sense to the user. A sitemap will allow you to create a website with a navigation flow that makes sense to the user and a search engine. I did an inventory of what content will be on the website and organized the information under meaningful labels so users could navigate to learn more.

Wireframe Prototype

Click the image to interact with the prototype