2014 (Phase 2 in 2017)

Redesign of an Online Shop System with focus on mobile usage, intuitive usability – and lots of A/B testing

Concept, Art Direction, UX Design

Summary

About the company

fotograf.de is the German brand of GotPhoto, an online shop system for photographers to sell photos to their clients. Thousands of school and nursery photographers around the world are using a customized GotPhoto / fotograf.de shop – and many more parents are buying photos of their kids with it.

In 2012, I co-founded fotograf.de with a few of friends. I was responsible for the product strategy, created many concepts and features in close collaboration with our customers and also acted as interim product manager.

Approach

Before 2014, the online shops were not responsive and very much customized by our photographers. Therefore they had a bad user experience, and were hardly usable on mobile devices. In order to remain capable of doing business in the future, we needed to switch to a more unified shop that is extremely simple to use, especially on mobile devices.

Project

Concepting and designing a 100% responsive online shop. It needs to be easy to use for a diverse target group and still customizable by our customers. 

Roll out the new design to thousands of our customers and validate the metrics by doing initial A/B tests.

Implement a process to continuously improve user experience and conversion rate – based on feedback, usability testing and validated by A/B testing.  

fotograf.de

In 2012, I co-founded fotograf.de (international GotPhoto.com). It is an extensive SaaS online shop system and website building kit for photographers with tons of features. By this time, it supports thousands of photographers to sell photos online to their clients. Quite a few of them are generating their main income through the platform. Currently, fotograf.de is operating mainly in Germany, United Kingdom, USA, France, Austria. Back then, we were 4 founders working on the idea – now fotograf.de has over 50 employees. During the years, I worked on several projects – always focussed on the development of the product, solving problems with innovative ideas and providing a remarkable User Experience.

Hintergrund

Das Geschäftsmodell von fotograf.de / GotPhoto hat sich im Vergleich zur ursprünglichen Idee stark gewandelt. Vom Website-Baukasten zum Onlineshop System – vergleichbar mit Shopify. Fotografen können sich einen individuellen Shop einrichten und Fotos an ihre Kunden verkaufen. Zahlungsabwicklung, Produktion und Versand und vieles mehr wird komplett übernommen. Die Herausforderung zu traditionellen Onlineshops besteht darin, dass es nicht es nicht nur einen Produkt-Katalog gibt, sondern viele Fotos zur Verfügung stehen, die wiederum mit einer Vielzahl von Fotoprodukten kombiniert werden kann. Zum Beispiel Fotoabzüge, Poster, Fototassen, digitale Downloads, Leinwände usw.

Warum ein Redesign?

Neue Funktionalitäten wurden regelmäßig hinzugefügt, allerdings ohne das Gesamtkonzept zu überdenken. Fotografen hatten viele Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten, die allerdings nicht immer zu einem besseren Kauf-Erlebnis geführt haben. Die mobile Nutzung stieg – die Shops waren aber nicht responsive. Durch Kundenfeedback und Usability tests erkannten wir, dass viele Endkunden nicht intuitiv bestellen konnten und den Bestellvorgang zum Teil sogar abgebrochen haben.

2015 entschlossen wir uns daher, das Onlineshop System komplett zu überdenken – sowohl den Nutzerfluss, das Design und die Technologie. Schließlich sind die Shops das Herzstück von fotograf.de / GotPhoto und entscheidend für die erfolgreiche Abwicklung von Foto-Aufträgen.

David Bühn