Skip to content
Fernwick

Case study — Retail

Reimagining the storefront of a worldwide retailer

UX DesignUI Design
Homepage design explorations spread across two studio monitors

Overview

Client
Meridian Retail Group
Year
2017 — 2018
Role
Product Designer
Scope
Homepage, 14 markets

Meridian’s homepage was the busiest page in the company — and the least loved. Years of campaigns had stacked up into a corridor of banners, and every market had quietly built its own version. Shoppers bounced; editors despaired.

I led the redesign of the global homepage template: a flexible storytelling canvas that kept the brand’s voice while giving regional teams real freedom. The new page rolled out market by market, with editors trained and templates measured as we went.

The challenge

One template, fourteen shopping cultures

A homepage that sings in Stockholm can fall flat in São Paulo. Promotions, seasons, payment habits and even scroll behaviour differ wildly — yet engineering could only maintain a single codebase, and the brand team would accept only one visual voice.

The design had to be opinionated about hierarchy and generous about content: strict where consistency mattered, loose where local relevance won.

Reviewing homepage layouts on dual monitors in the studio

The approach

Modular stories, governed by data

Phase 01

Behavioural audit

Analysed scroll, click and search behaviour across markets to learn which modules earned their place.

Phase 02

Modular canvas

Designed a set of content modules with clear rules for order, density and imagery — freedom inside a frame.

Phase 03

Market rollout

Piloted in three markets, tuned the template against live behaviour, then rolled out with editor training.

Designers and developers pairing on the homepage build Editors and designers reviewing homepage modules around a screen

Outcome

  • Editors finally enjoy Mondays

    Publishing a campaign page went from a ticket queue to an afternoon’s work with the self-serve modules.

  • A calmer, faster page

    Strict module budgets cut page weight dramatically, and the clearer hierarchy lifted shoppers further down the page.

  • One brand, many voices

    Regional teams shape their own stories inside shared rules — the template has survived four seasonal cycles unchanged.

Keep exploring

Have a storefront that needs rethinking?

Contact me