Enhancing Product Discovery and Boosting Customer Satisfaction for Wholesale Fashion Buyers
Company/ Active Basic
Role/ Web Designer
Tools/ Figma, Balsamiq, Asana
Intro
Active Basic (also called ACTIVE BASIC USA) is a fashion wholesaler specializing in contemporary young women's fashion, catering primarily to business owners such as boutique and store owners.
I stepped in to revamp the UI/UX and refresh the digital storefront for our ecommerce business. My redesign focused on improving product discovery, clearly separating the basics from fashion categories, streamlining navigation, and optimizing the site for mobile.
What Wasn’t Working (What Customers Kept Asking)
The company offers two main apparel categories: basics and trendy fashion styles, all through its e-commerce platform.
When I joined the ecommerce team, the website was holding many customers back.
Customers (wholesaler buyers) couldn’t tell if a shirt was a casual fashion piece or just a basic. Imagine trying to order a bulk of shirts to sell in your store but not knowing if what you picked actually fits your brand and clients.
On top of that, the site wasn’t mobile-friendly. Busy boutique owners on the go had an even harder time shopping on our site.
Our core users were busy boutique owners and retail buyers. They kept hitting the same wall. The site was hard to navigate. They could not tell what was a basic tee versus a trend piece. And because things were not clearly labeled or organized, they relied heavily on customer support just to figure out what to buy.
To dig deeper, I worked closely with the Ecommerce and Customer Service teams. We reviewed real phone calls and email logs to gather the most common questions and complaints. We organized them into patterns, especially around navigation issues and mobile struggles.
Here is what we kept hearing... 👇
Listening First: What Real Customers Had to Say
Before diving into design, I talked to 10 of our regular customers. I wanted to know in detail what made online shopping so frustrating.
I asked things like...
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What’s hardest about finding products?
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What makes you reach out to support?
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What’s broken on mobile?
The answers were loud and clear:
Basics and trendy items were hard to tell apart.
Navigation was clunky.
Mobile was just... annoying.
With those insights, it gave me a much better idea of what to fix.
Honestly? I Didn’t Know Where to Start 😵💫
The site was a mess. No mega menu, no announcement bar, and a layout that looked stuck in 2012. Customers were frustrated, and so was I.
Everything felt urgent, but tackling it all at once? That would’ve led nowhere.
So I took a breath and laid out a workflow to follow. I started with visual research and annotated the old site to understand what was working and what wasn’t.
One step at a time. That’s how I began turning the chaos into clarity.
Finding Brand Clarity
Returning customers knew what to expect but new users often got confused about whether we sold basics or trendy styles.
To fix this I split the site into two clear sections: ACTIVE BASIC for essentials and ACTIVE USA for fashion. Each had its own logo but stayed connected under one brand (I took cues from brands like Nike and GAP).
Getting Ideas Across Without a Dev Team
Since our team didn’t work directly with any developers, I had to find a way to communicate design changes clearly to our IT team, who handled website updates.
I put together low-fidelity wireframes in Balsamiq, focusing on the most important changes, like a new mega menu, clearer product categories, and a layout that actually worked on mobile.
I walked them through the “why” behind each idea, showing how it would help users find what they need faster and make the site feel easier to navigate.
Quick Turnaround
Within two days, the IT team took my wireframes and pushed the new layout live.
Old
Updated
But Some Things Didn't Go As Planned...
The new mobile site looked better, but it wasn’t perfect. Some elements felt cluttered, and parts were getting cut off on certain screens. It was assumable that it was not fully responsive.
There was no QA team, so I had to catch issues myself by constantly checking the live site and jotting down bugs as I spotted them.
To make things trickier, I didn’t have access to the MVP, original layout, or codebase. So every fix was a workaround. It took extra time and patience, but I kept pushing to improve it.
Reflections & Impact
I learned how to troubleshoot in the dark without full access, without clean documentation. I built stronger communication with IT, got creative with problem-solving, and made the most of what I had. This experience made me a more resourceful designer and sharpened my eye for spotting real-world UX issues.
Even though Active Basic USA is B2B, the problems felt familiar like the ones you’d expect in a B2C shop. Customers still cared about product discovery, visual clarity, and smooth browsing. It was a good reminder that good UX principles apply across the board.
The redesign made a difference. Customer inquiries about product discovery dropped by 40%, and weekly sales went up by 35%! The CEO was thrilled to see this, and threw a nice dinner at a fancy rooftop bar for the Ecommerce team 🥳
There’s definitely still room to improve, but the foundation is working!