M&M Merchandisers

Catalog Architecture

The first problem that needed to be addressed was the inefficient way the information was displayed. There were fifteen product categories, many of which referred to music or musical instruments. The goals was to decrease the number of product categories and subcategories to speed up decision making, per Hick's Law. Ideally, the number of items in any list should be in the range of 7±2, based on GA Miller's findings on working memory. I was able to reorganize most of the categories myself by following the lead of retailers in each respective industry and just based on what made logical sense. The only place where I needed help was with 18 of the items in their Jewelers Supplies category. I didn't want a catch-all category of jewelers' tools, but I didn't know how these items should be broken down. To help with this, I called around to local jewelry stores, hoping some actual jewelers would be able to refine my list.

Unfortunately, jewelers seem to be a dying breed, as I found very few of them – most of the stores I called had only sales people. Of all of the stores I called I was only able to find two actual jewelers, one of whom was nice enough to help me. I stopped by his store and did an open card sorting exercise using Optimal Workshop's Optimal Sort tool (result is shown at right and linked below, along with Catalog Architecture and user tasks). I ended up putting a few of these items in multiple places, and losing the "Findings" category in favor of lumping ear nuts (earring backs) together with the earrings M&M also sells.

Catalog Architecture Links:

 Choosing a Shopify Theme

We knew we were going to relaunch M&M Merchandisers' website using Shopify Plus, which meant we would have to select a theme to start with and then identify, design and build any necessary customization. Ordinarily, I would play the lead role in researching Shopify themes for the client, weighing business needs against the built-in capabilities and shortcomings of each theme. After that, I would present my recommendations of what I thought was the strongest theme (sometimes the choice is only narrowed down to 2 or 3 themes). In this case however, the M&M team had looked at Shopify themes prior to my starting on the project and had a strong preference for the Empire theme. Having used this theme previously for a similar company, I knew it would also be well suited for M&M and expressed my agreement with their decision.

I had a good idea of what Empire could and couldn't do out-of-box, and was therefore able to set to work on theme page mapping (explained later) and customization planning earlier than expected.

I also took that opportunity to build an Axure library of the Shopify Empire theme so I could save time when we got to interaction design. I expected that by creating this Axure library we might also have a head start on future projects – given this was the second client project I'd been on that used this theme since I started at Codal, the odds were pretty good that we would have future clients who wanted to use it. I didn't end up building all of interactivity into the library, but all of the structure, sizing, and spacing of elements are set to match the theme.

 Feature List/Theme Page Mapping

M&M already had a working website that did most everything they wanted it to, so the feature list wasn't created less to plan out new functionalities, and more to keep track of what was on the existing site so we could later plan where it would go on the new website and how it would be implemented.

I then created a theme page map was to plan out which pages in the theme would most easily accommodate M&M's features and content. Theme pages were listed, numbered and linked on the first tab, while the second tab was a full breakdown of page names, sections/subsections, and functions. Once I squared what M&M needed with what the Empire theme provided, I was able to clearly plan what customization would be necessary on each page. This process, though tedious, was absolutely invaluable to the redesign and migration.