Shapes Experience, Converse.com

Background: The Shapes Collection is a gender free apparel collection that launched in September 2020 on Converse.com in both North America and Western Europe. This collection was designed to break the boundaries of sizing and gender norms. The sizing is not your usual traditional men’s or women’s sizing, but rather 4 different sizes (let’s call them I, II, III, and IIII) that are intended to fit “every body”. This allows the consumer to decide what size best fits their style. The launch of this new collection, posed a new challenge for us: to introduce a whole new way of shopping to our shoppers.

Business Problems

• How might we launch a truly innovative, boundary-breaking collection?

• How might we expand the Converse shopper’s understanding of our product set?

• How might we continue to empower our youth through celebrating freedom of expression of individuals and their movements?

User Problems

• How might we educate our users on the unique collection’s sizing?

• How might we help our users visualize each style/size combo in order to express their truly unique style?

• How might we give our users a frictionless purchasing experience?

Key Strategies and Tactics

Understand the Converse shopper

• Conducted competitive analysis across 20+ different competitors: best-in-class, gender free products, and products with unique sizing needs.

• Conducted user testing to identify preferred methods to understand and accommodate sizing needs of our users.

• Discovered and designed new enhancements

Leverage our current site capabilities 

• Embedded sizing information throughout user journey to educate users on the Shapes sizing

• Designed full end to end Shapes experience for both our North America and Western Europe geos.

• Designed within the capabilities our backend content management and merchandising systems.

• Aligned with cross-functional teams in order to create a system that was low-maintenance and effort.

Final Enhancements Implemented (but not limited to):

• Wayfinding elements across the site (navigation, search, homepage modules) in order to help users discover the Shapes collection.

• A visual system across the site for users to recognize throughout their journey: Customized sizing filters size picker, and size badging on product imagery.

• User tested size chart and ability for the user to access measuring details directly on the PDP, allowing them to stay immersed in the shopping experience.

• Model sizing information paired with photos, in order to help users understand how a size/style combo might look on them.