About Cularth
Business bio
Cularth is a e-commerce website that sells organic natural products for healthcare, consumption, and wear. It’s goal is to help consumers live a healthier lifestyle through buying and selling of organically produced African products.
Product Awareness & Increase User Engagement
Business goal
Cularth’s business goal includes increasing site visits, promoting exclusive deals and products, and
improving the brand to showcase healthy living.
What to solve
The problem
Since it is a new company, Cularth needs a way to increase product awareness and user engagement so that they can develop a brand that is known in the organic industry.
My Role
What I did
I explored the problem at hand and conducted research to understand the needs of consumers in the organic and natural industry.
Industry Research
To start, some simple industry research was conducted to get more familiar with the people, products,
companies, etc in the organic industry. This was done in a loose structure as a mindmap.
Key Learnings
• Many people choose organic because of the wide array of benefits it poses and because they
believe they are doing something good for our planet and society
• Potential customers would want to know how Cularth’s products are more beneficial for them
and the outside world when comparing non-organic brands
Competitor Analysis
After the insights collected during industry research, a competitor analysis was conducted between five competitors to identify industry trends, create benchmarks, and to find new ways to speak to potential consumers.
Step 1: Initial insights were gathered onto this spreadsheet with competitors listed above and analysis categories running down the left.
View Competitor Analysis Spreadsheet
Step 2: Information was then consolidated from the chart into a visually attractive, easy to read way. This made the important pain points and stand outs easier to grasp for each competitor.
Step 3: The insights were then presented to the client in the brand’s UI.
Key Learnings
• Personalization of a website gives consumers a sense of community
• Ingredients and how to use a specific product can help benefit consumers who are health
concious
• Marketing and social media seem to be successful when the brand has consistent postings,
engagement with their users, and CTA’s throughout their website
• Inclusivity of products can be improved
• Confusing shopping experience in terms of finding the right products and checking out can
can be frusterating
• Being able to track shipments can be important for retailers
User Personas
Taking the learnings from the competitor analysis, user personas were created to illustrate potential consumers. This was done to help drive the design process along and to better understand the
needs, goals, and behaviours of customers.
Using the needs of Stephanie, Joe, and Karen helped develop site architecture and wireframes for optimal placement of content.
Stephanie represents the vegan and budget
friendly audience of Cularth. Many vegans
tend to choose organic products since it alignswith their values but have trouble finding certain products within their budget.
Joe is representing the male audience and
for those who are retailers. He is advocating for a more inclusive brand that has something for everyone so it can support a variety of beauty businesses.
Karen is representing the social media
influencers of Cularth who love to follow
brands and keep up with latest products/
deals. Karen will be the one to promote and
leave reviews which is important for
Cularth’s online brand.
Challenges & Next Steps
Challenges throughout the design process included:
• Difficulties extracting key data from the competitor analysis
• Formulating personas to represent the diverse audience of Cularth
• Trying to infuse a design-centered focus in a new company
Overcoming these challenges gave me the chance to learn how to look for key information in
research to help solve the business goal. When formulating personas, I learned the importance of
digging dipper into my research to uncover a more inclusive audience. Lastly, I've also come to learn that not every design process is the same.
Next steps include incorporating the key insights made from research into the landing page and perform user testing.
Cularth will expand it’s product base by offering organic groceries and clothing in the future.