Who is Stories LA?
Stories LA is a beloved independent bookstore in the heart of Los Angeles. Their brick and mortar store is a community focal point and houses an incredible selection of books across genres.
The Challenge
Stories LA is the book lovers bookstore –– every customer walks out with a new book in tow because it reliably has new, exciting, and critically acclaimed books. Book curation is one of Stories LA’s strongest differentiators, but you would never guess from their overwhelming and cluttered website.
Where to begin? The first step was to conduct a heuristics analysis of their current website using UX principles.
Information Architecture
Currently, the website presents users with 60 different genre tabs to get to the subject they are looking for, or all 3439 books in its inventory
Navigation
There is currently no sort or filter functionality to find books based on budget, subject, product information, or reviews
Visual Design
Clunky visual design overwhelms the user with options without demonstrating a hierarchy of information
Then, I conducted Competitive & Comparative analysis to see how Stories LA measured up against direct and indirect competitors
Top book chains (B&N, Amazon)
Top book chains used contextual navigation and ‘best of’ lists to guide users towards the products they might like but do not know enough about
Independent bookstores (McNally Jackson, Arcana)
Independent bookstores differentiate themselves through ‘expert hand-picked’ book curation and building a community of readers on their sites (reader reviews, personal lists and in-store events)
Insights
C&C analysis found that curation and community made bookstore sites successful, valuable and memorable to users
Problem Statement
Users need a way to efficiently find books that are relevant to their interests so they can spend more time engaged in the book finding process instead of being overwhelmed by bookstore inventory.
Information Architecture Research
The next step was to see how users intuitively organize information to design the most effective information architecture for the book buying experience
Card Sorting
Two phases of card sorting (open & hybrid) helped me understand how users expect books to be organized
Results
Users unanimously organized book genres into sub-genres and ‘main’ genres for faster sorting. Ultimately, we went from 60 genres to 12 ‘main’ genres with sub-genres categorized beneath
Time to ideate!
I knew I wanted to focus my solution on curation, community, and efficiency of navigation to stay true to Stories LA and give users a valuable browsing experience.
Usability Test Results
Left Navigation
3/3 users found the secondary navigation of book subjects included in the left navigation to be redundant and confusing
“Why would I click there if I know the subjects are at the top?”
Browse All
3/3 users liked curated lists to guide their decisions but wanted a browse all button to have an option to see the store’s entire inventory of a subject.
Product Page
⅔ users wanted a product page that prioritized the blurb of the book and did not require users to scroll to find it. Users also did not want to see all of the product information at once and preferred focusing on one aspect of the book’s information at a time.
Final Iterations
Link to Prototype
Home Page
Here I made the Stories community the focal point of the bookstore by emphasizing in-store events
Curated lists on the home page also guide users towards books they might like
Genre Page
On the genre page, I opted for a suggested lists navigation as opposed to an inventory list - smaller groups make book lists more digestible and emphasize Stories specialty curation
Curated lists guide users towards their interests without overwhelming them with choice
There was also filter and sort navigation incorporated to get users what they wanted
Product Page
Used divider lines to focus users on the product and relevant information
Prioritized book blurb and reviews to fill in gaps of user knowledge
Incorporated recommended products (contextual navigation) to keep users exploring Stories LA’s inventory