Zalando
How to serve inspiration
By 2023, Zalando was serving over 50 million customers in 25 markets with over 6,000 brands on offer.
It was Europe’s largest fashion e-commerce platform. THE place to find what you were looking for.
The problem?
Our research showed that many customers weren’t sure what they were looking for.
They needed ideas. Not just lists of trending items but the context behind them - expert guidance, cultural relevance, the stories behind the style.
And they couldn’t find any of it easily. Not just on Zalando, but anywhere.
Our challenge
How do we become THE place to find fashion inspiration?
Easier said than designed
Everything from our brand voice to our design system was focused on making shopping easier.
But inspiration needed a different approach.
And the first question we had to answer was: why would customers come to us to find it?
We had to create a new brand persona and experience that matched our promise.
One that established our cultural expertise and focused on storytelling rather than selling.
We brought together all our stakeholders – design, product, marketing, brand, content, merchandising and local markets – and held a series of workshops to define our core values.
Making them tangible through a series of contrasting positions, and asking for perspectives on where we should stand.
We then distilled them into principles to shape our voice, experience and content design.
From transaction to social-editorial
Alongside the brand voice, we evolved the design system to create new content formats, interaction patterns and language systems.
Combining cues from social media and editorial platforms to invent and test a new way to shop.
We redesigned each element, from content hierarchies to CTA patterns, testing and iterating new approaches to optimise for engagement.
And with a bold new edge to our brand voice, we crafted UX copy that stood out when needed and disappeared when not.
Guided by our voice and experience principles, inspired by diverse sources and informed by constant user testing insights.
We transformed the CX across the user journey, from transaction-focused to engagement-led.
From CX to business impact
Trialled in Germany in 2023, the program was scaled up to all EU markets + the UK.
It unlocked premium assortment from high-end brands like Maison Margiela to leading designers like David Koma.
It became a platform for fashion influencers and pop culture icons, including Eduardo Camavinga and Charli xcx.
And it helped us connect with a whole new customer segment, lifting engagement KPIs by 150%+ through constant iterations over 18 months.
Together, these factors lifted our Average Order Value, leading to significant uplift in Customer Lifetime Value – the north star metric for the business.