Savage X Fenty

Savage X Fenty is a digitally native DTC brand entering a period of change, with a major CMS migration underway to support new acquisition strategies and future growth. Engineering focus was on the migration and on what global marketing teams needed from it. From a UX and product design perspective, there was no clear starting point. Product and design teams lacked a prioritised roadmap for improving the existing customer experience, and access to sensitive performance data was limited. Without a clear starting point, there was a real risk of reactive delivery and wasted effort. The challenge was to create focus quickly: identifying where UX improvements would have the greatest impact on conversion and customer experience, without slowing the wider platform work already in motion.

With delivery already in motion and engineering focused on the CMS transition, product and design lacked a clear, prioritised starting point. Rather than move straight into execution, I ran a focused UX audit first, so the teams could agree where experience improvements would have the greatest impact. The audit gave everyone the same picture of where the problems were and a clear order to tackle them in. Despite the client having recently commissioned a more extensive third-party audit, this work was adopted as the primary reference and went on to shape Savage X Fenty's 2024 UX roadmap.

The existing checkout had a structural problem at its core. A slide-out mini cart appeared when users added items to their bag, but it showed almost none of the information a customer needs to commit: no line item prices, no order total, no shipping cost, no discount codes. Because it answered so few questions, users had to navigate through to the full cart page anyway, making the mini cart effectively redundant. Worse, between the mini cart and the full cart sat a forced sign-in prompt, at exactly the moment when the user still didn't know what they'd be paying. The sequence was asking people to commit before giving them any reason to. That's where abandonment was happening. The redesign addressed this in three ways. First, we replaced the mini cart with a fully functioning drawer cart, with all the information needed to make a decision visible without leaving the page. Second, we moved the sign-in step to after the user had initiated checkout, and introduced guest checkout for those not ready to create an account. Third, for returning customers with saved addresses and payment methods, we eliminated the redundant shipping and payment entry steps entirely, taking them straight to review and place order. The product finally remembered who they were. Each change removed a specific reason to stop.

Pages designed in Figma were being rebuilt by hand in Builder.io, and that rebuild was adding around 80% to the effort. Rather than accept it as a team constraint, I looked for a way to remove it. By testing and introducing a Figma-to-Builder.io workflow, we were able to generate responsive pages directly from existing designs. This cut rebuild effort by roughly 80%, sped up delivery, and gave engineering and product teams more room to focus on the migration itself.