Engagement Ring & Bespoke Services Sections
Opportunity
The marriage market is a staple of the jewelry industry. 2.3 million couples wed every year in the US. [2,077,000 marriages annually] which means there are nearly 6,200 weddings a day!
$72 billion per year is spent on weddings and the average wedding budget is $20,000.
Design Problem: Virani has the ability to provide setting customization via a drop ship service known as Stuller, as well as, procure any number of diamonds through certified diamond sellers. However, in order to communicate the ring customization process to online shoppers, there are no diamonds or, finished rings to display.
Unique Selling Point: Once a customer lead is generated, Virani Jewelers is able to provide a high level of service and deliver a product that is of the highest quality at the most competitive of prices.
Personas: Most engagement ring shoppers are buying a diamond ring for the first time in their lives and know nothing about diamonds.
Previously, men would buy the ring separately but now couples go shopping together.
Setting Versus Diamond: while some women have a sense of the setting style and diamond shape they prefer, men have to figure out how their budget fetches them the best diamond.
Reframing the problem for the user: The 4Cs of a diamond: cut, clarity, color and carat dynamically come together to influence the price, however, when you use the knowledge of diamond to the advantage of the setting and other priorities, it is in fact possible to find an optimal diamond for any budget.
Solution: Given how important a wedding is; marriage is a huge step — customer service is a key factor in this experience. The fact that diamonds do not exist in Virani’s inventory should not detract from making online sales because the purpose of the store is to generate leads, after which each customer should be handled directly.
Virani’s Engagement Ring section, and more precisely, the ‘Ring builder’ had 2 phases in its road map.
Below is the ring builder currently live on Virani’s site
In phase I the Engagement Ring section was technically constrained to Algolia technology, which was used for the filtration system of all other product types. The paradigm of this technology took a large pool of data and narrowed it down to results of a users selections. This was too cumbersome, strategically for the purposes of building an engagement ring, or a variety of engagement rings that displayed the characteristics of a user’s selections. User could create 1000s of products by combining 8 setting styles + 3 metal colors + 5 diamond shapes + 3 metal purities!
In phase II the challenge was merely that the sale could not be fully complete unless a customer inquired about the diamond because only the ring setting can be fully purchased online.
Understanding the user’s journey and Virani’s desired outcome:
Phase I
Low Fidelity Screen flow: Three Concepts Figures 1-5 (below)
(Figure 6) In Phase II the SORT BAR was eliminated not only because users found it confusing. Users did not understand if it was a second navigation or a filter. This made the filter affordance a late discovery. Users’ cognitive reasoning derived it to be too in terms of functionality.
Figure 7
Low-fidelity prototype testing indicated that users did not already know what the ring-setting styles are, hence illustrative icons [Figure 7] were preferred by test subjects.
Iteration 2 & 3 of Concept One.
1. Phase 1 design thinking was to integrate this section with Algolia technology, applying the same filtration system in order to be cohesive with other product types.
2. Usability testing of med-fi prototype indicated what the sequence of modules should be in order to flow intuitively.
3. We confirmed how large the assets should be in order for users to decipher the elements and make selections easily.
You can see these changes reflected in the high-fidelity screens.
Layouts 2, 3, 4 follow this user flow: User VIEWS ring AFTER selections.
1. Design thinking was that a user may have settings in mind and wants to focus on the selections first, to scroll down and see a variety of results.
2. The assumption was that Virani would upload thousands more product to show results to combinations of setting + color + diamond shape.
3. Additionally, it was assumed that some users would enjoy the anticipation involved with building a ring, and that anticipation could be provided by showing the result with some delay.
STEP 1: User SELECTS components
STEP 2: User VIEWS Result
This layout placed the custom ring at the top of the screen, much like a product page with controls on the right. This view could work for both a sequence of steps with a progress bar, and, if the user made a selection from a product grid.
For this project, it was important to explain the wireframes to not only the development team, but also the database team who use Shopify. The design requirements had to be fulfilled by database constraints in order for the coders to figure out how to create the desired result. This involved mapping the data and using Algolia as well as Javascript to produce functional results that translated on the interface for the user.
For Phase II there were going to be a finite number of rings selected by the marketing team, which the user could then further customize. I had to understand how to help the user make sense of the rings and factor in the element of customization before they even contacted us. The ring builder had to be easy to use and useful for a user. In the industry, engagement rings are widely available and highly competitive. Yet, the transparency and value we provided was highly niche.
Open Card Sort [1 min clip]
Subject explains similarities and differences in rings and other reasoning for sorting them into categories.
Figure A (expands on click) shows overlaps in how people recognized ways to categorize the rings.
Figure B’s visual display shows patterns of variation in ring-setting design in dynamism of diamond-shape variation. This meant that product grid and/or product page could condense the browsing process by showcasing the central ring setting with a hover product card. Alternatively, viewing variations could be simplified with interaction design where the control has control over what diamond shape and/or metal color they want to view the setting with.
Card Sort Comparison [Figure A]
Visual layout of product grids based on each card sort. [Figure B]
Concept 4
Concept 4 Product Page Layout Options
Final Product Page Execution
Engagement Ring Page Iterations
Stuller is the drop-ship service used by Virani Jewelers to create the ring setting. The auto cad software allows limitless possibilities of custom design creations.
Why Algolia was not used for ER section.
Algolio takes a large sample of data and narrows the search.
In the figure on the Right Hand Side, one can see how many variations there are for one particular ring.
Rather than build a ring from a variety of components, it was easier to allow users to build variations of pre-selected rings that marketing offers to users.
Since we offer customization and bespoke services, the transaction is not complete till an appointment is booked. Any need to customize the ring further can be satisfied offline.
Database Table of Engagement Rings
(click to expand)
Data for Variations of a Single Ring 122105 & their Combinations:
Diamond shapes, metal color, metal purity
(click to expand)
Wedding Jewelry
Wedding shopping even confined to South Asia are multitudinous. Religion or region, and the combination of the two can result in completely different attire. People know what type of jewelry is appropriate to their ceremonies. The main difference for Western weddings based on competitive analysis was the term “wedding day” jewelry, whereas in South Asia it is termed as “bridal jewelry”.
The most meaningful strategy was to curate broad categories based on western or south asian styles. Some mixed marriages have two ceremonies and therefore two looks.
Western weddings tend to be diamond pieces whereas South Asian ones include gold, usually yellow gold.
