With so many filtering options for the rug category, PMs assumed the online consumer would most likely be interested in sorting and learning more about the material and the type of fabric (technique).

However, when we brought in consumers for our user testing, they stated that the general content of advice was helpful but they were more interested in sorting by quality and durability. This feedback consequently took us back to the drawing board and we ultimately created a new “list pattern” to accommodate the online consumer request.

This case study is a great example of how user testing is the best way to learn what the best functionality is for the consumer; hence it’s not just about validating a PM’s hypothesis.

This is also a great example of the importance of “lincoln log” or “brick” design for engineering to make it easy to swap components vertically on a page. In this example, the “Homebase Components” is a reference to Wayfair’s FrontEnd team of pre-made code that we managed to update into a new pattern. Another way to have come to this solution would have been to provide the users with some multi-variate testing.

As you can see from these mocks, all of the provided content to offer the online consumer more confidence in making their purchase live within “cards.” When we finally released the design into production, we still tested the prioritization of these bricks to land on the layout which led to the highest conversion.