ZALANDO STORIES
By 2023, Zalando was serving 50 million customers in 25 markets with over 6,000 brands on offer.
But for many customers, the choice was overwhelming. They wanted ideas on what to wear from people they could trust.
They needed a new way to shop fashion.
Focused on inspiration, not transaction.
Easier said than designed
Everything from our brand voice to our design system was focused on making shopping easier. But inspiration needed a different approach.
We needed a new brand persona and experience. One that established our cultural expertise and focused on storytelling rather than 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 asking for perspectives on where we should stand.
Who do we think we are?
We distilled our values into principles.
To shape how we’d design the voice, the experience and the way we act.
Transactional to social-editorial
Alongside the brand voice, we evolved the design system to create new content formats, interaction patterns and language systems.
Combining cues from social and editorial platforms to invent and test new ways to shop.
Rewiring the system, rewriting the rules
We redesigned each element, from content hierarchies to CTA patterns, testing and iterating new approaches to optimise for engagement.
And with a bold new edge to our brand voice, we crafted UX copy that stood out when needed and disappeared when not.
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.
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BRAND VOICE | EXPERIENCE DESIGN
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