Discovery & Insights
Category Page System
Category pages are key mid-funnel touchpoints that help customers discover, compare, and gain confidence in products before purchasing. At Vistaprint, this experience lacked consistency and scalability, with fragmented navigation patterns that disrupted discovery and created complexity for internal teams.
I joined the Navigation & Taxonomy team during the discovery phase to help shape a more seamless and intuitive browsing framework. Working closely with a lead product designer and cross-functional partners, we researched user needs, analyzed behaviors, and defined principles to guide a scalable category structure.
This work not only created a strong strategic foundation but also strengthened my approach to research, collaboration, and user-centered problem framing.
ROLE:
UX/UI Designer
CLIENT:
Vistaprint
TEAM:
Product Designer, Product Management, Copy, Product Lead, Engineers
TIMELINE:
2024-2025
Goal
Define a seamless and intuitive browsing experience across all category pages, ensuring clarity, consistency, and ease of navigation throughout the user journey.
Challenge
The category page experience lacked consistency for both customers and teams. Varied navigation patterns disrupted discovery, while manual maintenance limited scalability. With Vistaprint’s broad catalog of products, materials, and use cases, the challenge was to create a flexible yet standardized framework that could scale without sacrificing usability.
LEVEL 1
LEVEL 2
LEVEL 3
Research & Discovery
During this phase, we held a series of cross-functional workshops with different teams (including content, product, operation, care and engineering) to gather diverse perspectives and uncover internal challenges affecting the browsing experience. By synthesising our findings, we identified key statements captured the outcomes users truly desired and served as a foundation for the upcoming exploration phase.
In parallel, we conducted 8 in-depth interviews with real customers from US, UK and Canada, to better understand their motivations, browsing habits, and pain points when navigating product categories.
“I prefer local suppliers for hands-on, personalized interactions, especially for wearable items”
“Better transparency in production timelines to reduce surprises during ordering”
“I would go quality, turnaround, price …”
What We Heard
“Online suppliers are used for convenience and 24/7 availability but lack the tactile feedback and flexibility of local providers”
“The better businessman I become, the better I understand business.”
“I’m Fostering a sense of belonging and exclusivity through branded items that clients take home”
“Better transparency in production timelines to reduce surprises during ordering”
“How things look when the customer receives it is important to me. So I mean it's always been a priority to me of how it gets delivered to the customer.“
“The base of my business and growth has strictly been word of mouth.“
Insights
From user interviews, we found that participants prioritize cost-effective solutions, fast turnaround times, and specialized support to make informed decisions. Addressing these needs presents an opportunity to capture the local-first market, build loyalty, and drive repeat purchases.
Here are the key themes and findings:
Local vendors are often preferred when guidance is needed.
Opportunities: Position CARE as specialized help, and offer guidance on choosing the right products for their needs, especially for complex items like packaging.
Online providers are associated with longer turnaround times.
Opportunities: Present transparent production timelines, shipping time and costs, and unit price estimates upfront to minimize surprises. Provide tools for delivery and bulk order pricing estimations directly in the product selection phase.
Material Transparency and Validation
Opportunities: Promote and create sample kits to reduce uncertainty and trial-and-error costs. Improve clarity of material options with comparisons of features like size, thickness, or durability.
Balancing Cost, Quality, and Flexibility
Opportunities: Provide tools for delivery and bulk order pricing estimations directly in the product selection phase.
Blueprint for Future Navigation
We explored different ways to organize and navigate the category pages, focusing on solving user pain points while creating a more consistent and scalable experience. Even though the project was paused before full implementation, these explorations gave the team a clear direction, aligned cross-functional partners, and laid the groundwork for future improvements.
This experience also strengthened my skills in synthesizing research, collaborating across teams, and framing problems from the user’s perspective — lessons I continue to carry into every design project.
