2023 ~ Website Design
Nissan Global Parts & Accessories
Role
UX Designer
Team
UI Designer
Web Designers
Product Manager
Timeline
3 months
Skills
UX Consulting
UX Strategy
UX Design
Brief
Leverage existing platform investments to deliver a hybrid, technical solution for Nissan's Parts & Accessories platform, prioritising customer experience without sacrificing business needs.
Challenge
Making a complex catalogue feel effortless
With a catalogue of thousands of different parts and accessories for a multitude of Nissan models and versions, creating a simple and easy to use shopping experience was our top priority. This project refined the existing experience to ensure customers feel confident when browsing and purchasing products.
Discover
Bridging the gap between multiple stakeholders
SimplePart partner with many automotive OEM's to provide a platform and operational service for the parts & accessories e-commerce experience. This means that the designers responsible for the global template, that will be used on all Nissan websites worldwide, work at SimplePart.
My role as lead UX designer on the project was to represent Nissan to advocate for our users and business objectives to ensure this emanates in the Simplepart design. Since this is a platform that is used by multiple OEM's, we faced several challenges around technical feasibility, time vs effort and conflicting business interests. As well as bringing my expertise as a designer to the table, my skills in articulating decisions with conviction, prioritising requirements and maintaining positive client relationships were essential for this project.
Process
Competitor analysis
Analysing best-in-class e-commerce experiences helped us to identify areas of concern and opportunity with our existing user journeys. This was communicated to the client in the form of workshops and PDF reports to use for reference.
Make recommendations
Recommendations were made on how to improve several aspects of the experience to address user pain points.
Quality check
The design process included many push-backs and compromises in order to find the best solution that meets user needs, but also goals of both businesses.
Outcome
A unified, streamlined consumer experience
Key decisions
Optimised header
A requirement for the new technical design was to implement a Nissan Global header along with the SimplePart e-commerce platform header, evidencing benefit for both business cases.
A stacked header with additional functionality enables users to easily access frequently-used pages on the website. Going with a more compact design does not distract from the primary browsing experience, but is still visible to the user.
Meaningful CTA's
On the live site, the 'featured products' cards were outdated and not very easy to understand. One of our greatest concerns was using the part number as the call to action label, a decision made my SimplePart to boost SEO, but poses several experience and accessibility problems.
After a lot of discussion on the matter, the Nissan team were able to successfully convince SimplePart (most importantly, the CEO) to put experience at the heart of the product. My role on this journey was to provide evidence and justification for more meaningful call-to-actions, and do so with conviction in high-pressure meetings.
Recognition over recall
Users shouldn't have to rely on their memory when completing tasks using web interfaces, as this could add to cognitive load and creates greater chances of error.
In the example below, the first WIP design for changing your dealer from one to another was purely a notice to confirm the change. Adding dynamic text here to replay the new dealer to the user before making the selection, and highlight other important information that may impact their decision means the user is completely informed and therefore in control. This helps to minimise error and reduce task time.
Improved vehicle selection
The vehicle selector in the live site is clunky and requires the user to make 4 different selections, refreshing the page each time. Further, there was no option to backtrack to adjust previous selections or easily change the vehicle once it had been selected.
Simplifying this experience by providing dynamic drop-downs allows the user to provide the same information but with a lot less friction. A cleaner interface also speeds up the process as the user is familiar with the design pattern after completing the first field. Displaying a second option to type in their VIN (registration plate) gives the user freedom of choice, which in this case reduces the number of steps needed to achieve the same outcome.
Accessibility documentation for developers
In some cases, our design suggestions were not able to be implemented due to the rigidity of the SimplePart platform. Focus order in the example below was a key concern, as the screenreader doesn't currently provide any context when focused on the 'select' button.
By providing accessibility documentation for components that need additional consideration, we can ensure that users with additional needs can still experience the website in a meaningful way.
Reflection
This project was less about hands-on design and more about influence. Working as a consultant meant my impact came from building alignment between Nissan and SimplePart — translating user needs into arguments that landed with senior stakeholders across two businesses with competing priorities. It reinforced that at a senior level, the ability to bring people to a decision is just as important as the design itself.
Testimonial
"Lilymae has been the main UX designer on the project and she has quickly grasped the overall goal and has been advising and collaborating with our third party vendor (Simplepart) on UX best practices to ensure that we create a seamless journey from Nissan to Simplepart platform, adhering accessibility, copy guidelines and WDS alignment. This project has been difficult as there has been technical challenges as well challenges working with the third party, but Lilymae has handled herself and these intricate and complex relationships gracefully.”
- Senior UX Desginer