Following on from the successful launch and continued implementation of the Coty Design System, I lead the design on the system's expansion to include and provide true e-Commerce to Coty’s catalogue of brands. This involved removing the current aggregate system, and implementing product management, account creation and checkout flows to the existing design & react systems.
With similar constraints to the initial launch of the design system, the scope of the project focused on providing the brands with stable, responsive and accessible e-comm tooling. It was imperative to give users a best in class shopping experience, bringing the current aggregate system in-house.
Coty’s brand repertoire was being moved onto the newly launched react library that a core team was still working on delivering. A smaller team was spun up to begin working on creating an e-Commerce system that these brands could adopt and begin utilising to sell their products rather than relying on aggregators. This brought with it several of the original challenges, including accomodating a variety of product types, catalogue sizes and account functionality.
As these were already established brands we knew we would need to launch a substantial e-commerce offering for them to adopt it and meet customers lofty expectations.
As this was an expansion of the design system initiative, we had to provide Coty’s beauty Brands with stable, responsive and accessible features. Any solution would need to be flexible and easy to personalise to reflect the brand’s offering.
We would need to empower and re-assure brands as they moved from their channel style sales and supported the shift to a shopper API and front end CMS system. This system would need to follow the same rules laid out in the design system, and would require documentation and training to reflect the new features. The system would need to accommodate teams of different sizes, supporting established brands desire to refine their own e-commerce experience and support smaller brands that required more ‘off the shelf solutions’.
Architecture and analysis
The team and I dedicated our first sprint to reviewing possible technical solutions, reviewing the existing architecture and the capabilities of various tools to support the transition. Coty had already decided that they wanted to use a third party to manage the transaction, however, how we solved issues surrounding inventory and stock was up for debate. We investigated several options, deep-diving into what each options capabilities and limitations were.
In tandem with this, I ran a series of interviews and competitor analysis, testing other online retail leaders in the beauty industry with participants. I used a variety of user types, aware that the design system would need to accommodate a variety of expectations and journeys.
Approach and implementation
As a team, we opted to use Shopify, both for scalability and its react code base blending well with our existing design library. This allowed almost total customisation of the experience and system as we moved forward into the design and implementation phase.
Following the customer interviews and competitor analysis, the team and I workshopped the sequence we would design and develop, outlining what the atomic nature of these system additions would look like. We ranked each component in importance to achieving the minimal viable system, through to future features. We also spent time attaching user risks to each flow, and technical risks to each component and round of design and engineering.
As the final stage of these workshops, we collaborated with the quality team to provide accessibility feedback on each new launch and implement Fullstory and Qualitrics to monitor each new flow as the brands moved over onto the new system.
In-house e-commerce
The engineering team, product management, QA and I worked with bi-weekly validation sessions with the brands' tech team and users as we worked through our backlog. I managed the UX logic and UI patterns throughout the process. Unifying UI and interaction language between brands was paramount, creating consistency and trust with both stakeholders and these tech teams.
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