Zzue Creation - Outdoor Furniture Website Revamp

Zzue Creation is a luxury outdoor furniture company. This was a real business project when I was in Zzue Creation as their Marketing Manager.
The genesis of this project was a question that arose during my first month of marketing Go-To-Market (GTM) activities. In a casual interaction, one of the founders asked me, "Fiona, what do you think of our website?" My immediate response was, "Not good.”
As a small company with around 10 staff members, once Pandora's Box was opened, I found myself already deeply engaged in addressing the challenges.

The problem of information architecture - Misleading the users
The inconsistent outlook and feel of the product positioning and the website - Making both the B2B & B2C sales teams not use the original website.

We positioned this online platform as the showcase of the product, which is more on awareness and consideration than conversion, due to the limitation of high product positioning & millions of physical fabric samples.

We expect when the website image and information are more relevant to the product image, it might increase the organic reach of the website.
Also, we need to empower the internal users to include this website as one of their tools.

As the brand logo was changing from a “Black, Yellow, Red” tone to a blue gradience, I created a new colour palette based on the colour of the ocean.

Changed the overall moodtone to reflect “luxury outdoor furniture”.
Having the “Our products” corner lets the user understand what we sell with a quick look.
Delete the redundant “E-shop” & “Products” and simplify to E-shop only.

Provide 2 options:
1. Using the dropdown in the e-shop selection.
2. Using the category selection on the homepage.

Content preparation is an epic task for this project.
As Zzue sells more than 60 outdoor brands, each brand will have around 100-300 new products per season.
I needed to construct a flow and filter system to confirm the scale of this project.

My testing is only focused on the functionality check before launch.
I created a test plan and let several testers use Chrome, Safari, Firefox & IE and test on mobile (IOS & Android), laptop and desktop.

The total number of users seems like a drop. However, it was because the paid search was cut from 82.6% to 54%. With consideration of that part, the organic users have increased from 173 to 531 (207% up).
The bounce rate dropped from 70.18% to 65.42%.

We expect when the website image and information are more relevant to the product image, it might increase the organic reach of the website.
- The organic users have increased from 173 to 531 (207% up).
Also, we need to empower the internal users to include this website as one of their tools.
- Both B2B & B2C teams (6 staff) started to switch back to the website and stop using the pdf brochures.
- The B2C team also benefited from the WhatsApp integration of the website.

Some management movements twisted the project from a sample product showcase to a full product catalogue, which conflicted with the project's aim. The project became unmanageable at the end.

I was using previous experiences back to the web agency ages. I was using quite a traditional way to monitor the project, including bi-weekly meetings, sitemap confirmations, layout confirmations, product uploads, test plans, UAT and launch. I discovered I didn't do enough testing, such as usability testing while the project started and the preference test while I created the layout.

I think one of the problems is my previous design & development method didn't actively include business owners (just biweekly meetings). They don't have chances to immerse themselves in the testing and comparison of solutions. They cannot reflect their ideas instantly during the design process.