Case Study — E-Commerce UX / Retail Consulting

Ashley Furniture — Rebuilding Confidence Into a Big-Ticket Purchase

Furniture is a high-consideration purchase most people still want to touch before they buy — a $500 to $3,000+ decision, made from a phone, across a catalog of thousands of SKUs, for one of the world's largest furniture retailers.

Ashley operates 2,000+ locations worldwide, serving online-first buyers and in-store shoppers who still browse online first. The redesign had to hold up across that catalog, across devices, and alongside a company-wide brand relaunch happening at the same time — and that shaped nearly every decision that follows.

Role

UX Strategist & Product Designer

Focus

End-to-End E-Commerce Redesign

Client

Ashley Furniture (Consultant)

Team

4 designers · 5 engineers · PM · Product Owner

Duration

30 weeks

Tools

Figma, HotJar, UserTesting.com, LucidChart

Accessibility

WCAG 2.1 AA Compliance

20%

Increase in customer retention after launch

35%

Reduction in average time-to-purchase

90%

Task completion in final usability testing, up from 30%

The Constraint

Not a redesign — a trust, catalog, and fulfillment problem

The challenge wasn't a visual refresh. It was rebuilding confidence into a purchase people were used to making in person, inside a catalog of thousands of SKUs, while the brand itself was changing underneath the site. Every decision below — the research, the testing, the interface — was shaped by the constraints laid out here.

What I had to balance

Purchase confidence for $500–3,000+ items bought without touching them
A catalog spanning furniture, mattresses, kids, outdoor, and decor
Both individual shoppers and B2B buyers on the same platform

What the business required

A brand relaunch — new logo, new pricing model — shipping alongside the redesign
Consistency across 2,000+ physical locations and the online store
Cross-platform parity across website, iOS/Android apps, and tablet

What fulfillment added

Orders could split between warehouse pickup and third-party shipping — a distinction testing showed most users didn't understand
Terms like "curbside" and "doorstep delivery" meant different things internally than they did to shoppers
That complexity had to resolve inside a checkout already carrying trust problems

Technology constraints diagram: platform constraints (internet required, online payment, Android/iOS app) and cross-platform requirements (mobile device, tablet, website)

The platform constraints mapped at the start of the engagement — the basis for the cross-platform parity requirement above.

My Role

I was brought in as a UX consultant to lead strategy and design for Ashley's end-to-end e-commerce redesign — product discovery through checkout and post-purchase tracking. I led design in a team of four (myself and one other UX designer, plus two UI designers), working alongside five engineers, a product owner, and a PM, with two business stakeholders reviewing key decisions.

The engagement ran 30 weeks, from early research through the launch of the redesigned site across web, mobile, and the native apps.

The Problem

Shoppers didn't trust what they couldn't touch

Ashley's catalog was hard to search, and checkout didn't build enough confidence for a purchase this size. In early surveys, about half of respondents said they'd abandoned a cart because they didn't trust the checkout process — and just as many said finding the right product in the catalog was genuinely difficult.

Shopper Experience

Overwhelming catalogs without strong search or filtering made it hard to find the right piece. Buying something this size without touching it left shoppers wanting more proof — real photos, reviews, clear return policies — before they'd commit.

Business Operations

Every uncertain shopper was one who left to check a store in person, or abandoned the cart entirely. A checkout that didn't clearly explain delivery options added friction at the exact moment purchase intent was highest.

Business Impact

Removing that friction reliably increases conversion and repeat purchases — but only if the experience felt as trustworthy as walking the showroom floor.

Research & Personas

Twelve conversations that reframed the brief

I combined quantitative surveys with 1:1 interviews and competitive benchmarking — testing whether the problem was really "the site looks dated," or something deeper about trust and findability.

User surveys 1:1 interviews Competitive benchmarking Affinity mapping

Users surveyed on shopping behavior and checkout confidence

~50%

Cited low trust in checkout as their reason for abandoning a cart

Competitors benchmarked, from direct furniture retailers to Amazon and Shein

What built trust

High-quality, real product imagery
Reviews, ratings, and Q&A before purchase
Clear return policies and shipping transparency
Fast, simple checkout flows

What caused friction

Large catalogs without strong search or filters
Checkout steps that didn't build confidence
Wanting in-store validation before big purchases
Unclear navigation between categories

Two core user personas from research: Patrick Hamilton, a considered planner, and Rebecca Johnston, a faster-moving lifestyle shopper, with demographics, goals, and frustrations

Two of the core personas built from this research — Patrick, a considered planner who researches every purchase, and Rebecca, a faster-moving shopper guided by lifestyle and trust signals. Both shaped navigation, product page structure, and checkout decisions below.

Journey Mapping & Flows

One catalog, five different paths to checkout

I mapped end-to-end flows across discovery, product exploration, cart, checkout, and delivery — including the mixed warehouse-and-shipping paths that later became the biggest source of confusion in testing. Those flows drove early low-fidelity wireframes across the full purchase journey.

End-to-end user flow diagram covering onboarding, search, product pages, cart, checkout, and delivery tracking

The validated end-to-end user flow.

Low-fidelity wireframes covering home page, product listing, product detail, cart, and checkout

The low-fidelity wireframes that flow drove, covering home, listing, product detail, cart, and checkout.

Usability Testing

From 30% task completion to 90%

I tested the redesigned flows with 15 real users completing real tasks: finding a product, comparing options, and checking out an order split between warehouse pickup and shipping. The original flow's baseline task completion was 30%; after iterating on what testing surfaced, the redesigned flow reached 90%, with only 8% of participants still hitting friction on any flow.

Real users in usability testing

30%

Baseline task completion, original flow

90%

Task completion, redesigned flow

Still hit friction with a flow after redesign

Key insight: almost all of the remaining friction traced back to one thing — Ashley's mixed fulfillment model. A single order could split between warehouse pickup and third-party shipping, and internal terms like "curbside" and "doorstep delivery" didn't mean the same thing to shoppers that they meant inside the company. That's what the iteration below actually fixed.

Original usability testing notes and findings, listing friction points around mixed delivery methods, cart visibility, and delivery terminology

The original testing notes — the source behind the stats above.

Design Execution

Fewer categories, larger imagery, one clear next step

Based on research and testing, I focused on three things: faster discovery through a catalog this size, larger product imagery to replace the trust that touch normally provides, and fewer, clearer next steps at every stage of the funnel.

Category landing — current vs. redesign

Category landing page comparison: current Ashley site with a promotional grid versus the redesign leading with lifestyle imagery and simplified category navigation

Product listing — current vs. redesign

Product listing page comparison: current Ashley site versus the redesign with larger imagery, clearer filters, and simplified product cards

What changed

Simplified breadcrumbs and clearer section labels, replacing a promo banner competing for attention
Lifestyle photography leading each category, replacing a wall of promotional tiles
Larger, touch-friendly imagery and buttons on product listings
"Show more" replacing pagination, so browsing wasn't constantly interrupted

Closing the loop with research and testing

Checkout confidence: clearer visual indicators whenever the cart changed, and an explicit split between "delivered" and "pickup" items instead of one ambiguous total
Navigation: simplified category structure and stronger filtering, addressing the "hard to find things" complaint from about half of survey respondents
Delivery language: replaced "curbside" and "doorstep delivery" with plain, differentiated wording, and let shoppers change an item's fulfillment method at the item level instead of the whole order

Final Execution

The flow that took task completion from 30% to 90%

The redesigned path from product page to checkout — protection plans, financing, and a clear order breakdown, carried consistently across desktop and mobile.

Desktop — product page to checkout

Redesigned product detail page on desktop showing the Wildenauer dining table with price, 5-year protection plan, quantity, and add to cart

Product page — protection plan and financing surfaced before checkout, not buried in it.

Redesigned cart and checkout page on desktop showing itemized order summary, financing options, and a continue to checkout button

Cart & checkout — an itemized total instead of one ambiguous number.

Mobile — the same flow

Redesigned product detail page on mobile with the same protection plan and add to cart flow as desktop

Same product page, same trust cues, on mobile.

Redesigned checkout page on mobile showing the full itemized order summary, protection plans, shipping, and taxes

The full order summary carried through on mobile — no collapsed or hidden totals.

20% increase in customer retention.

Simplifying discovery and rebuilding trust into checkout turned a catalog shoppers found overwhelming into a faster, more confident path to purchase — measurable in both usability testing and real sales data after launch.

Measured by comparing site-wide sales and cart completion from 2019–early 2021 against performance in 2023, following the redesigned site's launch.

35%

Reduction in average time-to-purchase

90%

Task completion in final testing, up from 30%

Consistent

Experience held together across web, app, and 2,000+ stores

Furniture is a considered purchase — the job was never to make people decide faster, it was to make them trust the process enough to decide at all.

Looking back: the mixed warehouse-and-shipping confusion that drove most of our late friction should have surfaced in discovery, not in usability testing three-quarters of the way through a 30-week engagement. I took operations stakeholders' word that fulfillment was "solved" instead of testing that assumption with shoppers earlier — that's a research gap, not a design one, and it cost us a round of rework we didn't have slack for. I'd also be more careful with the outcome numbers themselves: comparing 2019 against 2023 makes for a clean headline, but two years is long enough for a pandemic-era shift to online shopping and a full brand relaunch to move retention on their own. The redesign likely gets more credit in that number than it earned on its own.