ZALANDO STORIES
By 2023, Zalando was serving 50 million customers in 25 markets with over 6,000 brands.
It was THE place to find what you were looking for.
The problem? People didn’t always know what they were looking for.
They needed ideas, insights, inspiration.
Overview
Our challenge
Redesign the e-commerce experience from transactional to inspirational.
What I did
Led workshops to debate and define our values
Developed design and voice principles
Conducted cross-industry benchmarking
Led naming explorations and presented to leadership
Evolved the design system with new patterns and formats
Crafted UX copy to be distinct yet integrated
Mapped user journeys across the CX
Supported continuous iterations with qualitative and quantitative feedback
Who I worked with
Principal product designer (partner)
Brand and marketing stakeholders
Design system team
Editorial team
Product management
UX research
Engineering (iOS, Android, web)
Data analytics
Our solution
Combined social, editorial, and shoppable elements to create an inspiration-driven experience
Exceeded engagement KPIs by 150% over internal benchmarks
Helped increase Average Order Value and lift Customer Lifetime Value – our North Star metric
Easier said than designed
Everything from our brand voice to our design system was optimised for fast, frictionless shopping. But inspiration needed a different approach.
We needed a new brand persona and experience. One that established our cultural expertise and focused on storytelling, not just selling.
What do we stand for?
We brought together all our stakeholders — design, product, marketing, brand, content, merchandising and local markets — and held workshops to define our core values.
Making them tangible through a series of contrasting positions, and debating perspectives on where we should stand.
How do we walk the talk
We distilled our values into principles.
Simple, memorable ones that everyone could easily apply.
To shape how we’d design the voice, craft the experience, and engage with customers.
Transactional to social-editorial
Alongside the brand voice, we evolved the design system to create new content formats, interaction patterns, and design components.
Combining cues from social and editorial platforms to invent and test new ways to shop.
Rewiring the system, rewriting the rules
Along with the design lead, I re-examined each element, from signpost labels to CTA patterns, testing and iterating new approaches to optimise for engagement.
And crafted UX copy that stood out when needed, disappeared when not.
Integrating the new with the existing
Mapping user journeys across the entire CX, I identified entry points to the new experience, adapted with contextual content.
And developed an ‘elevated’ product page with storytelling and cross-sell modules.
CX to business impact
Trialled in Germany in 2023, the program was scaled up to all EU markets + the UK.
It unlocked premium assortment from high-end brands like Maison Margiela, attracted culture icons like Charli xcx, and engaged a new customer segment.
Together, this increased the Average Order Value, leading to a lift in Customer Lifetime Value – the north star metric for the business.
