Information Architecture
for Cooney Brothers
Developing a robust information architecture that enables customers to quickly and effectively navigate Cooney Brothers’ new e-commerce site.
The Outcome
Developed a new information architecture that consolidated product categories and provided a consistent shopping experience.
The Challenge
Enable customers accustomed to working directly with a sales associate to independently find and purchase items online.
Project Overview
In the summer of 2017 Cooney Brothers, Inc., a family-led company with over 80 years of industrial piping and plumbing experience, launched a new e-commerce site with the hopes of:
driving existing customers to the site for self-service and
increasing revenue by growing their customer base.
I worked with their implementation team to develop a site structure that would enable users to quickly and effectively navigate to desired products, enabling these overarching goals.
Approach
User Group Identification > Site Audit & Expert Review > Revised Site Map > Wireframes
Due to the timeline and budget for this project, I was unable to conduct user research, instead I partnered with internal teams to identify overarching goals and user groups. I then completed an expert review of the existing Cooney website using heuristics and accepted usability principles to analyze the site structure and interface. This review enabled me to quickly and inexpensively uncover a number of potential issues which were then grouped into overarching categories. Based on these findings I developed a revised site map with actionable recommendations and created low-fidelity, interactive, wireframes to mock up potential solutions.
Revised site map.
Low-fidelity, interactive wireframes showcasing the proposed site structure.
Findings
A number of the below recommendations were put into place helping Cooney to increase their web presence and drive sales through the new online catalog.
See the full presentation including all proposed changes, revised site map, and key wireframes.