As the lead product designer for the 2023 iteration, I aimed to correct specific issues of past versions and introduced a persistent navigation bar to help visitors explore the large list of products. The purple aesthetic for the page and season tied in with the theatrical release of “The Color Purple.”

2022 Pain Points

104 Products - no way to explore them other than endless scrolling
Outdated ornament bumpers dividing each section felt disconnected from the categories they represented

2023 Exploration

Introduce a “favorite things” navigation bar within the article for better wayfinding
Hypothesis: giving shoppers the ability to better navigate the page will help them get to their product easier and increase CTR and thusly RPM.

Desktop Variations

User Testing

Before committing to a design, I conducted user testing sessions on these iterations and the language used on the navigation bar title

Notice the wild shades of purple in this mockup - the Oprah team was testing which colors would best fit their theme. I had to negotiate for standardizing the buttons to be uniform in color, as this current treatment was very distracting

2023 Design Solutions

Due to time constraints and other production concerns, I leveraged the the persistent navigation bar instead of the slide-out drawer
I also abandoned the “back to top” button due to poor findings from an additional A/B test that ran on a comparable in length listicle on Oprah’s site