PROJECT OVERVIEW: TOMS wanted to create a section within the site called Marketplace where socially conscious brands with a give back component (many of whom were inspired by the mission of TOMS) could promote their story, causes and sell their wares. It was important for TOMS to educate the public about this new venture, while creating a seamless shopping experience from TOMS products to Marketplace products.

GOAL:

1. Create a new section on the site for the Marketplace product, a new category and product page template unique to Marketplace that could promote each individual brand’s story and products. 

2. Provide opportunities to cross promote TOMS products.

MY ROLE: UX Designer. I was responsible for architecting the site navigation, category and product pages. I wanted to create an experience unique to this store within a store. In the end, I created a highly editorialized section with a curated Homepage that was updated on a regular basis, providing fresh content for users. Within the Marketplace experience, users could shop by category type, cause or region supported, or specific brand. We also created a visual icon language that quickly communicated the cause and region a brand or product supported so customers could know at a glance.

LEARNINGS:

While we were internally excited to showcase the different ways brands were helping particular causes or regions, we learned that this filtering option was not a highly used feature. Customers were mostly interested in browsing all products by category. We did keep this feature though since we felt like it was an important part of the brand positioning. Additionally, having a weekly curated homepage quickly became a taxing project on our Merchandising team, and we scaled it back to monthly updates.

Marketplace "Homepage". 

The concept was to have an immersive and interactive page where users could thumb through content like a magazine.

Brand Page. 

We created a special space for all of our brands to tell their own story - complete with video and a short Q&A with the founder(s).

Product Detail Page. 

We modified the standard TOMS product detail page to suit Marketplace items, weaving the storytelling aspect throughout.