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New home page and content merchandising design doubled engagement, increased subscription enrollment, and boosted marketing ROI.

Cricut Design Space – the companion software for Cricut cutting machines – had a stale and static home page experience. Despite its prime location in the app, the page failed to interest users and serve as a strategic tool for the marketing team.
 

To breath new life into the Design Space apps, I collaborated with a cross functional team to design a new Home Platform UX and design system. The platform was designed for flexibility and built to scale.

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Role

Lead product designer – in close collaboration with Product, Development, QA, Executive Stakeholders, Marketing​

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  • UX Audit & competitive analysis

  • Feature scoping and definition

  • UX research, concept testing, and prototyping

  • Collaborating on a new Design System 

  • Implementation support throughout development

  • UX design of internal CMS tool which powers curation

  • Stakeholder communication and management

Impact

The new Home Platform has:

  • Increased YoY subscription purchase conversion

  • Boosted material sales driven by in-app ads

  • Increased user engagement on mobile & desktop platforms by 2.6x year over year
     

Long-term benefits unlocked:

  • Integrated campaigns via email and social media

  • Content localization for all international markets

  • A/B platform testing for page content and ads

  • New Design System for Design Space

This project was designed and developed at Cricut, a public company empowering over 8 million members worldwide. At the forefront of DIY design and personalization, Cricut offers innovative hardware and software to transform artistic visions into reality.

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Why design a new experience?

Data showed that users skipping the home page nearly every session. This was a glaring indication that the home page experience was not a source of compelling content and inspiration. In interviews, users voiced how the page was disappointing. 

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"The home page is always the same"
Without a CMS, updating the page required a specialist and new content was infrequent.

"This content isn't relevant to me"
The page was generic to all, lacking any personalization based on preferences, engagement history, or geography.

"What home page?"​
The mobile apps did not have a home page at all, opening instead to a random list of projects, which users typically skipped over.​

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Defining scope and feature prioritization

At the onset of the project, we conducted five interactive research sessions where participants constructed their ideal Home Page experience using representative content modules.

 

Analysis lead to clear prioritization of the modules which users found most compelling. The short list was an initial scope for further exploration and feature MVP.


Start Making - i.e. New Project, Templates, and My Projects
Find Inspiration - i.e. Curated and seasonal content
Stay in the Know - i.e. Notifications and Sales & Deals 

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Supporting many user goals & workflows

The user research indicated that users start each session with diverse goals, thus the new page needed to support various work flows.


“I have an occasion or person I want to make for and I'm looking for an idea."

“I have a project idea already and I'm here to make it​."

“I have a material or skill I want to use, make with, or learn and am looking for an idea."

The tabs at the top of the page wireframe surface common entry points for new projects (by material, occasion, or project type) and highlight content for future inspiration.

Testing with four Cricut customers and a high fidelity prototype supported the hypothesis that a dynamic, curated page would inspire and engage users more than the current experience.

All users responded positively to the top section with tabs for starting points by Occasion, Material, Type, and Surprise Me.

  • Supportive framework
     

All participants liked seasonal and curated content.

  • Relevant curation


Users were not bothered by the number, placement, or content of ads.

  • Contextual promotion


All participants wanted to act immediately – make a project they saw, watch a video, or save content.

  • Engaging content

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New! Integration of projects, images, and promotional tiles

Cricut boasts a content library of over 1M makable projects, images, and fonts. But, the old Home Page could only support project tiles. 

The new UX framework supported integrated content types. By browsing merchandised pages, users could discover projects, images, fonts, ads & more.

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Merchandising Cricut Access subscription content had a direct impact on new subscriber acquisition. Conversion metrics indicated that users were highly likely to sign up for a trial after finding an inspiring image on the Home Page.

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Dynamic ads for Cricut Access subscription

The introduction of graphic tile ads served as in-app promotions with dynamic messaging about free trial offers and subscription benefits.

 

As part of this feature, subscription ads could be easily updated for A/B testing and visual variety.

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Mobile parity unlocks fully integrated marketing campaigns

In order to have impact at scale, prioritizing mobile parity was crucial for making Design Space a relevant inspiration hub.

​With software parity across platforms, the marketing team closed the engagement loop and directed qualified lead traffic from social channels and email to Design Space pages and content.

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Atomic design system built to support the new design

Individual components such as icons, typography, and color became tiles and larger page elements.


The new design system was synced with a corresponding code library and propagated to other parts of the app as a result of this effort.

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Gleaning user reactions from Facebook at launch

Cricut members are very vocal on Facebook communities.
On the day of launch, many left comments and reactions on the official annoucement post.

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"I love it. Almost thought I was on the wrong site. It looks so fresh and exciting with so many ideas at your fingertips!"

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"I absolutely love the new Home Page "

The initial launch of the Home Platform was an MVP

Enhancements and road map for future iterations to further increase user engagement included:

  • Algorithmically personalized content

  • New content types (e.g. videos and fonts)

  • Detailed metrics to understand user behavior on the page

  • Elements of delight on the page

Before

Old Home Page

After

New Home Page

🩷 Thanks for reading! This is a detailed project, drop me a line if you'd like to hear more about it.

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