Shopify — E-Commerce Platform Trial

Part 2 of 4 for an application I did for @Shopify's UX research intern position. Trying out their ecommerce software's free 14-day trial, I was able to familiarize myself a lot better with their platform product.

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I chose the Pop theme and went with the Bone style option to work off of because of it's minimalist look and wanting to focus more on my content strategy.

For my online store, I wanted to somewhat gamify the experience of the store to really "sell" my skills as a UX researcher. I created 5 pages:

1. The Roots: Business history section that goes through my passion for helping small businesses and having attempted starting a business in the past

2. Unique Taste: Value proposition for how my ideal business sets itself apart from others, showing my appreciation for UX research and business needs

3. Ingredients: Featuring my skill set in research process and methodologies to resemble the "Ingredients" of what it takes to create a successful research study

4. Drink Up: Featured UX case study challenge to showcase my skills put into action and final research findings/results

5. Sponsors: All the resources, interview participants and Shopify tools I used that went into creation of the store

In addition, the landing page features a promotional announcement to learn more, an engaging header and a message from me ("the business owner") to really personalize the experience for a potential customer.

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I really enjoy designing and researching for small businesses. Having a personal interest in entrepreneurship, I feel inspired talking to small business owners and hearing their passion come alive when talking about their stores.

From getting to learn how they started their company, to understanding their unique business quirks and cool products — I've learned it's important for these businesses to want to showcase this within their online store for the rest of the world to see and want to be there every step of the way to make this possible.

Creating an e-commerce store really gave me the opportunity to put myself in a small business owners shoes and gather important context while researching.