Boogie with us

Month: May 2022

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Roboboogie Design Portfolio

Since the launch of our new Robosite in 2019, we’ve been making changes here and there in between client projects to optimize the site experience. After almost three years of small improvements and edits, we identified a few different needs we could address with one larger addition to our website.

First, we know that visitors are excited about seeing our work when they come to the Roboboogie website, and we want to show off more of our work! Our case studies are great, but not every project translates well to a narrative-based entry. Our solution was to create a design portfolio side of the Robosite, and we wanted to approach the project the same way we would approach addressing the needs of our clients: creating a custom-fit solution that can be easily integrated into our process and roadmap.

Once we started thinking about a design portfolio for the Roboboogie site, we needed to brainstorm and find creative ways to problem-solve. In the UX process, we started asking questions to guide our design thinking: 

How do you show a webpage within a webpage? 

The eternal dilemma when designing a website portfolio is that it’s not easy to convey the digital experience of one site on the page of another site. Just slapping a PNG of the whole page isn’t ideal; it’s unusual to see a long screenshot of an entire page and detail is lost in such a large image. It’s not the way we want to be showcasing our work. 

Instead, our vision was for each screenshot to be viewed as a snapshot of a larger page, or have the real experience of scrolling through the page, but we couldn’t link to the website itself as our client’s pages will change over time. 

As a solution, our design and development teams worked together to create a scrolling window that users can interact with as if it were a smaller screen within our portfolio page. This also allowed us to pair desktop and mobile page designs together in a collage format for easy comparison of how designs translate across different sizes.

How do we customize each page to each client project without going through a new design and development process for each one?

Our solution was to define a general page outline for all pages, with areas to swap different modules out based on what type of work each project involved. The resulting library of design modules utilized different combinations of desktop, mobile, and email asset options, in slider, collage, and scrollable formats. We also created optional modules like testing statistics, video clips, and icon gardens. 

Designing all modules at desktop, tablet, and mobile sizes meant that our development team was able to see how each module flexed for different screen sizes, ensuring that our work is shown in its best light no matter what device our visitors are using. 

How can we add new design elements to our brand while staying true to it?

The scope of the design portfolio necessitated that we introduce a secondary menu to navigate between clients. We also created chips to tag & sort different projects by type of service in addition to creating 40+ design modules.

Having a thorough understanding of our existing brand and accessible brand documentation to draw from allows us to define new components in a streamlined and straightforward way. And having a team of quick-thinking designers allows us to fill in any gaps and create new elements easily as our portfolio expands. 

How can we design for the future, beyond the MVP, even though we want to publish sooner than later?

Ensuring that our design won’t need any major revisions as we add projects and clients was paramount to launch. We opted to design new components like the overlay menu and portfolio landing page with a larger amount of content, then refined based on what we actually wanted to launch with. This guarantees that the new pages and components can scale as more projects are added.

We had so much fun working on a project of this scale for our own website—and it’s what Roboboogie does best. We thrive consulting to identify project and client needs, creating a roadmap to a better solution, and getting there while creatively solving problems along the way. If you want to team up with the best in the business to tackle UX and UI needs as they arise, send us an email and let’s boogie!

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ShopTalk 2022 Las Vegas Recap

It’s 2022 and we’re beginning our slow return to in-person meetings and events. What better to dip our toe back into the water than joining 9,998 other amazing attendees at ShopTalk 2022 in Las Vegas? Well, let us tell you! It was amazing, and a little overwhelming, to be back in the presence of industry-leading presenters, best-in-class technologies, and really great three-dimensional human people. We spent three days at the event connecting with our partners and our friends, connecting with new potential technology partners to share with our clients, and absorbing the future of retail and eCommerce as envisioned by the companies and technologies building the infrastructure to make it a reality.

Oh… and our Sr. Partner Marketing Manager Allanda and our Director of Growth Matt really wanted to hit up the Britney Spears slot machine. 

What is ShopTalk 2022?

ShopTalk 2022 was a retail conference held at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada running from March 27th to March 30th, 2022. There were nearly 10,000 attendees registered and 500 sponsors and exhibitors at the event, including members of the Roboboogie team! Speakers at the event included Sam’s Club CEO Kath McLay, Poshmark Chief Data Officer Barkha Saxena, and Tapestry VP, Global Digital Product & Omnichannel Innovation Mandeep Bhatia. Every day of the event was also filled with amazing networking events and happy hours. There was also a performance by Flo Rida, but we missed it.

Who did we see at ShopTalk 2022?

The magic equation at Roboboogie is data + design + technology, and for the past two years, communication with our amazing technology partners has been limited to Zoom. Needless to say, we were ecstatic to spend some time with our technology partners!

Over the last three years, we have built an amazing partnership with the team at FullStory. If you’re not familiar with the technology, FullStory is a best-in-class Digital Experience Analytics platform. What does that mean? Well, it means that when you run FullStory on your website or native mobile application you are capturing all of the taps, clicks, and interactions from your users that help you identify and quantify user frustration. Paired with machine learning and highly performant session playback, it allows us to drive improved, data-backed user experiences.

But we weren’t there for a product demo (we use FullStory every day!) we were there to meet with the people that make FullStory awesome.

We also spent some time with the amazing folks at Clyde! Not familiar with Clyde? They have amazing, innovative solutions for eCommerce retailers to offer extended warranties and product registration. Their technology makes it easy for retailers to set up warranty programs, AND makes it easy for customers to purchase warranties, file claims, and track their progress. We love their focus on providing a great experience for the end-users of their B2B customers. They also used the event to show off their amazing new branding!

A number of our friends from the world of experimentation were at the event and it was a real pleasure to visit with the crew at AB Tasty in person. In 2020 we were invited to present at their virtual summit, and while we really enjoyed working with them virtually, it was much more fun to chat face-to-face. 

Who were some of the new people we met at ShopTalk 2022?

I’m glad you asked! We spent a lot of time working the floor, making introductions, exploring new technologies, and making new friends. While we don’t have a comprehensive list going yet, we’d love to highlight some of the new friends we made at RedRoute, ShoppingGives, ShipperHQ, MNTN, and Iterable.

What were the big takeaways from ShopTalk 2022?

There were so many speakers, so many great conversations, and so much great content to digest at ShopTalk 2022, and we simply couldn’t be in all of the places at once. Even still, here are a few takeaways from the Roboboogie team.

  1. Test everything! Nobody knows anything unless you test it.
    1. A few hot topics to explore and test are frictionless and flexible payment options including “buy now, pay later,” A.I. powered chatbots and product recommendations, and messaging around company sustainability practices. 
    2. We’re glad to hear that the appetite for testing across retail is strong. If you’re looking to innovate, testing should be a part of your roadmap.
  2. Metaverse is 100% the future…or maybe it isn’t… or maybe we’re still not really sure what it means.
    1. Okay, so this was a huge topic at the event. The Metaverse, also known as Web3, is growing at 2700%. Meta had a huge presence at ShopTalk 2022 and depending on who we talked to or who we saw presenting, it’s certain that the Metaverse is either the entire future… or not… or it’s somewhere in between. 
    2. While we didn’t leave the show with a definitive answer on where the Metaverse is going to play into the everyday digital experience of all users. There is currently no blueprint for it, but the time to start thinking about it and exploring it is now and we are committed to understanding changes in the digital landscape and how it affects our partners and clients.
  3. Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a key metric for Enterprise retailers in their omnichannel decision making. 
    1. It could have been that our ears were more finely tuned at this event than at past events, but we heard a lot of importance being put on NPS as retailers look to evolve and optimize the omnichannel experience for customers. We see this as a great opportunity to evolve customer segmentation to improve data-backed decision-making. 
    2. Through our understanding of data-backed design, technology integration, and analytics and reporting, we can layer NPS onto segments on top of user behavior to understand commonalities that may lead to a lower or higher NPS, and create personalized experiences (or broad experience changes) that address user pain points and drive increased NPS – not just to raise the metric, but to make your customers happy.
  4. Omnichannel Data 
    1. After two years, the store is back! Consumers are returning to in-store shopping experiences but simultaneously, increasing their digital engagement. The challenge for retailers is bringing that “in-store magic” to the digital experience and ensuring that brand messaging stays consistent and true across channels. 

Regardless of where they are interacting with your brand and products, consumers expect you to know them. It is important to consumers that their experiences are customized and personalized.

Where do we go next?

We’re on a quest to combine customer-centric design, data, and best-in-class technology to drive digital transformation for our clients. As we regroup from our travel, we’ll be building out relationships with new technology partners, and looking for innovative ways to drive innovation, revenue, and brand experience for our clients. Curious what that could look like for you? Let’s chat!