The redesigned Yankee Candle website showcases a clean, modern aesthetic that highlights the brand's premium scented candles through high-quality imagery and detailed scent descriptions. With an intuitive interface and seamless navigation, users can effortlessly explore the collections and discover new favorites. This elegant design enhances the presentation of Yankee Candle’s products, offering a warm and inviting browsing experience that draws customers into the world of fragrance.
Challenge
Design an immersive online experience that captures the sensory nature of the brand while conveying the warmth and richness of each scent.
Objective
Seamlessly translate the in-store sensory experience into a digital one, driving both emotional connection and online sales.
My Role
Design Strategy
Design Direction
Motion Design
Style Guide
Design Operations
Year
2018 - 2019
Motion Design
Style Guide
Design Operations
Before
Prior to the redesign, the Yankee Candle website faced challenges with inconsistent design, lack of refinement, and limited alignment across the full end-to-end experience. The adaptive layout also fell short of modern responsive web design (RWD) best practices.
After
After the redesign, I successfully transformed the Yankee Candle website into a cohesive, polished, and responsive experience. I ensured consistency, refinement, and alignment, significantly elevating the brand's digital presence.
Scent has the power to take you places, whether it’s a special aroma of home, the scent of the mountains from a hiking trip, or the fragrance of the beach.
- Yankee Candle, CEO
Personalized Candle Configurator
I proactively led an initiative to enhance Yankee Candle's configurator, a key feature for the brand. Recognizing its potential, I aimed to transform it into a more immersive experience that truly highlights the fragrances, bringing them to life for users and elevating the UI to be more intuitive across every single touchpoint.
Conceptual Prototype
This initial prototype was the breakthrough: it championed an unfunded, overlooked project, broke free from the vendor’s rigid template, and delivered an immersive visual-audio experience that told the story powerfully—ultimately selling the vision like hotcakes.
Scentplug Configurator
Journey Map
For Yankee Candle’s new Loyalty Program, we needed to uncover how customers experience enrollment and ongoing engagement. The journey map revealed two critical insights: customers resist signing up at checkout due to fears of hidden terms and feeling “locked in,” and even frequent users lack natural moments during product use that prompt repurchase. These findings directly informed a new, low-friction loyalty program focused on transparency and seamless repurchase cues, driving higher enrollment and retention.
Archetypes / Segments
We engaged a third-party agency to create segments for Yankee Candle. We identified key customer segments by analyzing quantitative purchase data and spending patterns. These segments allowed us to personalize the shopping experience, offering tailored recommendations and marketing to boost engagement and drive conversions.
UX Agile Process
I identified the lack of a clear process flow, which was impacting operational efficiency. I collaborated with the team to develop an optimized workflow, addressing gaps and improving overall performance.
Styleguide
To ensure design consistency for Yankee Candle, I established and provided UX artifacts that defined the visual language. Through my guidance and process enhancements, the development team effectively utilized the style guide as the definitive source of truth.
Results
I led the transformation of Yankee Candle's online purchase journey, optimizing key breakpoints throughout the experience. This resulted in a +49% lift in net revenue compared to last year, a +57.7% increase in add-to-cart rate, and a +33.9% boost in PDP view rate. A major highlight was redesigning the multi-page checkout into a streamlined single-page experience, which led to a +22.5% increase in checkout completion and a +9% rise in conversion rates. These improvements significantly enhanced user engagement and drove significant business growth
