Jessica Bower

ABOUT Evolved by nature

“The better-natured biotech company.” EBN has a new mission and wants to have their website reflect that. They are a small biotech company that wants to replace harmful chemicals with nature positive molecules. Their proprietary molecule platform is Activated Silk technology. This technology is used in three main sectors: biomolecules, natural ingredients and sustainable chemicals.

Planning

Figure out exactly what we want to say and how we want to say it. I worked very closely with our copywriter to put together some ideas of how we can get our message across. We figured out the hierarchy and then tried to work out the subcategories we wanted to showcase. I created several site map versions and presented them to our stakeholders. After many discussions, we settled on the map below.

WIREFRAMES

The homepage was already created by a designer and I was asked to build the wireframes for the rest of the website. The hardest page to build was also the most important and that was the Markets and Products page. The struggle was to figure out how to show the user that we have several products within three market segments that are all in different stages of development.

• Originally I was thinking we could lead with the products that are in market. That way we can show the user what’s the most real. Feedback on this idea is that we want to keep the products grouped together within each market segment incase an investor comes to the site looking specifically for the biomolecules section. We would want them to be able to view our biomolecules as quickly as possible.

• The final product shows just enough information. It doesn’t include the specific names of the molecules and doesn’t focus too much on what’s in market vs. only in development. We decided that could be viewed as a negative since a lot of our products are still in research phase.

Homepage:

• Eliminate the margins and make the site full width

• Create a responsive hero that shrinks down to mobile size and uses live text

• Include a “customer’s favorite” section that features one product per slide and include a description of what that product did (this was changed after launch because we found that it was too much reading and not enough choices)

• Include a section about the benefits of ordering from our website like Free Shipping and Free Returns

The homepage has been through many iterations. We realized in user testing that people weren’t understanding what Activated Silk was and why it’s important. We have been testing different ways to highlight Activated Silk on the homepage and explain it in simpler terms. We have also added two sub-heroes to give the user more information and sometimes a second promotion. Check out the live site: https://silktherapeutics.com

Quick View + Mini-Cart:

The add to bag and checkout process on the original ST website was bad. Here is a typical customer journey:

1. You are browsing the Moisturizer section and you see Hydra-Rich and Nurture+. You wonder what the difference is, so you click on Hydra-Rich and it brings you to the product page.

2. You read about it and think it’s too expensive. You wonder how expensive was Nurture+? To find out, you have to go back (with the back button in the browser because there are no breadcrumbs) and click on that product.

3. Now you are on the Nurture+ page. It’s cheaper, so you want to add it to your bag and look for a cleanser to buy also.

4. RED FLAG: You click Add to Bag and it takes you to the bag! You’ve lost your place! Since there are no breadcrumbs, you have to start all over again.

This had to change. I did a lot of research on how other skincare brands treated their shopping bag experience. I decided that a Quick View on desktop would be a great solution for users to get a quick look at the description, but can stay on the collection page. I decided to add the Mini-Cart because of the same situation. This Mini-Cart allowed the user to see their total, see when they achieve free shipping, can remove items, and easily begin the checkout process.

The Mini-Cart feature increased customer add to bag behavior by 40% and increased average conversion by 10%. The conversion rate was not as high as we anticipated but through user testing, we discovered it was because of the high average cost of each product. **Our AOV is over $125

Silk insider rewards program

I wanted to launch a rewards program for loyal customers because we had to many repeat customers. I thought that our customers would love getting points and earning rewards such as a $10 off coupon when you earn 250 points or getting 100 points on your birthday. This was also a way to increase brand awareness because we offered points in exchange for social media shares.

This program was a huge success. We currently have 2,000 active members and have generated $8,500 in just 5 months. We have seen our loyal customers buying more product and we have seen several new customers join the program.

activated silk challenge

We tried to launch a campaign targeted toward new customers. The concept was to talk about how Silk Therapeutics is clinically proven to work in just 10 days. We lowered the price of our starter kits to $25 each and encouraged consumers to join the #ActivatedSilkChallenge. We asked the customer to send us a before photo of their face before using our kit and then an after photo 10 days later.

We understood that this was a big ask. We know that people feel funny about sending photos of their face to a company. In order to entice the user, we said we would give 20% off their next order if they sent us their photos. We got like 3 photos so far and none are usable. We learned a lesson from this campaign. But here is how the landing page would be designed.

Next steps

• Enhance the Skincare Quiz. Although this feature only gets less than 5% of traffic, we plan to improve it and treat it as a product finder to help new consumers choose the best product for their skin type.

• Develop the landing page for the Activated Silk Challenge hard launch. Once we get some data and customer photos, we will be bring the wireframes to life.

• Use more video on the site.