Maxtrix® Kids is a furniture system that allows kids’ beds to grow with them. Built with high-quality materials and smart designs, Maxtrix offers a multitude of configurations, styles and accessories that make its furniture truly adaptable, customizable and long-lasting. 

Challenges

A wholesaler located in Charleston with a small brick-and-mortar presence, Maxtrix wanted to expand its market share through eCommerce. Although the company did have an online presence, the shopping experience was confusing for customers faced with an abundance of product choices. The in-store sales process that worked so well helping customers find exactly the right product wasn’t being translated to the online experience. Instead of finding all of the different choices and furniture configuration possibilities helpful, eCommerce customers were experiencing “decision paralysis” and not converting to purchase. 

Solution

eHouse Studio helped Maxtrix by bringing research-based eCommerce user experience (UX) best practices to bear on the strategy for the new website, which was migrated to Shopify Plus from Magento. We helped the client better understand and dissect their customers’ shopping behaviors and “pain points,” optimized site structure and navigation to reduce friction, improved product findability, and provided a solution to simplify and support customers’ shopping experiences on web and mobile. 

Guiding the purchase journey

To address the issue of option overload, we created a more guided shopping experience for customers that reduced visual “noise” and simplified the process of how they found the right products and options. The purchase path became a series of bite-sized decisions for customers that made it easy to browse and select options in an intuitive way. We redesigned the site structure and navigation UX to support a tiered decision-making process.

Prioritizing and parsing information

Within this tiered-decision approach, we helped the client prioritize content and structure it in a hierarchy that made it digestible for users. For example, if a customer clicks into a top-level category, they're presented with a category landing page. Then they are prompted to make a series of decisions about type, style, dimensions and finishes that guides them to the right products.

Applying visual aids 

We added iconography into the navigation as a visual aid, using silhouettes to represent each product style (e.g., classic bunk beds, bunk beds with slides, etc.) to boost understanding and enable faster decision-making. Illustrations were used instead of photos to eliminate “distractions” such as colors and finishes, which are choices to make in later steps.  

Leveraging the home page 

We designed the home page to instantly convey the brand’s look and feel, as well as communicate its key differentiators and competitive advantage: top-quality, highly customizable products. Using illustrations to explain the steps to build a bed combination and showcase the degrees of customization possible, the home page also highlights top-level categories, best sellers, and inspiration rooms, providing multiple ways for customers to enter into the shopping journey.

Eliminating shopping pain points

The product list pages (PLPs) allow customers, via filters, to easily compare photos of product finishes and colors without the inconvenience of having to click between product detail pages (PDPs). In addition, the PDP buy box features callouts that preempt some common roadblocks to purchase, such needing more assistance – we included a link to customer service live chat and a store locator for customers who want to see the product in person. Other key factors in decision-making were also addressed at this point in the shopping journey, including free shipping offers, information about delivery times and professional assembly services. 

Results 

The strategic work we did to determine a user-friendly, tiered decision-making flow and intuitive shopping experience was an overwhelming success, resulting in a two-fold increase in eCommerce revenues. We’re continuing our work with Maxtrix to refine the product detail pages (PDPs) and to add augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) functionality to help users visualize Matrix furniture combinations in their homes. 

2019 vs. 2018