Optimising the digital shopping experience for a home improvement retailer

The challenge

A national home improvement retailer wanted to improve its online experience across three very different categories - paint, timber, and kitchens. Each attracts a completely different mindset. Someone browsing paint is looking for inspiration and colour confidence. Someone buying timber knows their measurements and just needs to find the right spec fast. Someone configuring a kitchen is making a high-consideration decision that might take weeks. The site had to work for all of them, on desktop and mobile, without forcing any of them through the same experience.

The solution

We ran a structured research sprint combining three methods: a heuristic audit of the existing experience, interviews with DIYers across skill levels from first-timers to confident regulars, and competitor benchmarking to identify where the gaps were biggest. The research pointed clearly at three problem areas - navigation, product discovery, and checkout - and I prototyped targeted improvements across all three in Figma.

My role

I worked as part of a team of three - a researcher, a fellow designer, and a lead - embedded with the client over several weeks. My focus was the design side of the audit:

• Heuristic evaluation - mapped friction points across the full shopping journey, from landing to checkout
• User interviews - spoke with DIYers across skill and confidence levels to understand where the experience was breaking down
• Prototyping - designed targeted improvements in Figma across navigation, product pages, and checkout flows
• Stakeholder alignment - kept findings and decisions visible to the client team throughout

The impact

The audit covered 2 end-to-end user journeys across 3 product categories - Decking, Paint, and Kitchens - on both desktop and mobile. Issues were identified and severity-rated across 15 page types, from landing pages through to checkout. The work gave the team a prioritised backlog of fixes ranked by impact, so the conversation moved from "what's broken" to "what to fix first." The before/after prototypes made recommendations tangible rather than theoretical.

Key takeaways

You don't always need to rebuild a site to make a real difference. A few well-targeted fixes, grounded in what real users are experiencing, can move the needle faster than a full redesign.