Helping Shoppers Find the Magic Again:
A Navigation-First Etsy iOS Redesign
Reframing discovery, clarity, and accessibility in Etsy’s iOS app
Role
Tools
Project Type
Objectives
Who Is Etsy & Why Redesign Its UX?
The Problem
Who is using Etsy? What are they looking for?
Target audience
Demographic analysis showed that Etsy’s primary users are:
Women aged 25–40 (millennials), representing the core consumer base.
A smaller but meaningful segment of women under 25 and above 40 also engage regularly with the app.
Survey Insights
An online survey explored user shopping behaviors, revealed that the users have a strong desire for detailed product information, including origin, creator story, and impact. They also heavily use of other online stores for niche or handmade goods, often because Etsy’s experience feels disjointed.
How much does knowing detailed information about a product (producer, location of production, social impact, environmental impact, ect.) affect your purchasing decision?
What online stores do you use, if any, to find niche, customized, or handmade goods?
When making a purchase what are the 3 largest deciding factors in your decision?
How often do you research products before you buy them?
User Personas
Personas were synthesized from survey and research data to represent typical user motivations and pain points.
Usability Testing
Usability Testing
To verify assumptions and explore pain points, usability tests were conducted with participants from Etsy’s core demographic. Tasks focused on:
Finding familiar products
Navigating to followed shops
Discovering new items
Assessing content relevance on first launch
Key User Feedback themes:
Users did not always know where to find certain features.
Users wanted reviews with images.
Previously searched or popular content wasn’t surfaced effectively.
Defining the Problem & Design Goals
Based on research, the following goals guided the redesign:
Leverage keyword-driven navigation to better capture attention.
Present pricing and shipping upfront rather than below the fold.
Increase visibility of seller information early in the flow.
Modernize interface elements for improved accessibility and readability.
Information Architecture & Navigation Redesign
Current vs Revised Strucuture
Analysis showed that Etsy’s navigation buried important content and required excessive taps to reach core interactions. After redesign, the sitemap was reorganized to group related actions (e.g., Shop + Explore), streamline the user path, and bring popular features forward.
Revised site map
By combining the shop and explore pages, as well as reorganizing the "you" tab we are able to open up the map and create a group items activity. This will help to guide the user through the internal navigation.
Redesign
Unified Home Screen
Changes to the homescreen focused on streamlining primary tasks in the bottom nav and encouraging search by adding key work prompts to help users find what they want faster.
Changes:
Combined Explore and Shop experiences into a single hub to reduce user overwhelm
Added keyword-based quick search prompts to guide users toward popular items and categories.
Before
After
Experience #2 Product Page
Through research, I discovered that price, shipping, and ratings are the top three things users look for followed by item details. I adjusted the hierarchy to fit these user desires by moving the top three items to align under the image and moved the item description section above the fold. I also brought forward more seller information by adding key words similar to that of the home screen to quickly show more about the shop and seller.
Users stated that price, shipping times, and ratings are the top three data points they look for during thier shopping and search process.
Before
After
Experience #3 You
The You tab previously opened to a menu where you had to select the profile selection to access information. This lengthened the user path and hid information. Mimicking the navigation I created on the home page, I separated out some of the menu items into more visual and bite-sized chunks.
Before
After
Experience #4 Updates
The updates page seemed almost too simple. I moved Messages from the You page to the Updates page. Many of the competitors I saw did this as well, making a more familiar experience for the user. I again mimicked the new Home navigation to separate out the two sections. I also created cards that reflect the cards that were previously seen on the You page and added a call to action button to prompt users to utilize any sale or coupon they are being presented.
Before
After
Experience #5 Cart
The previous card had information sections that had a confusing hierarchy that made it difficult to understand and see all information. I rearranged the information to have a more clear reading of the content, as well as, reflect the established information structure seen in previous pages. I also designed the saved items to more closely resemble the saved items to create a more unified cart experience.
Before
After
Prototyping
To validate and test my changes I created a functional prototype. Check it out here.
Validation Testing
User comments
To validate the changes I made, I provided my prototype to the target demographic and asked the same questions from mky initial tests and recored their responses.
Here’s what people had to say about the redesign:
“This feels familiar like I understand how it's going to work.”
“I feel like it's easier to understand where I am.”
“I hadn't seen this feature before.”
Reflections
I was really excited about taking on this project as a user of the app myself. I was surprised that the more I analyzed the app the deeper and deeper I got into the redesign. There are still aspects of the app that I would like to approach, such as the micro-interactions and the less prominent pages. I feel like this was a great opportunity to push my design and research skills! It also reminded me to continue to keep pushing for great not just okay, because even if something works well enough that doesn't mean its working as well as it could.