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Paper Hearts Market

Founder Tiffany James had big dreams of a craft-centric, dreamy brick-and-mortar store in her small town in Washington state. She needed someone to guide her in developing a brand identity and ecommerce website for her crafty-based business.

In this website case study, you'll see the Ecommerce Arcade approach to designing a colorful and quick-loading website that was built for a creative entrepreneur.

Home Page mockup of the Paper Hearts Market website on a hand painted striped background

Coming off the heels of the exciting and colorful brand identity project, it was time for Tiffany and I to roll up our sleeves and get cracking on the website.
My job? Take that gorgeous brand identity and infuse that personality into the website (while, of course, making sure it was easy to navigate and use).

Tiffany's job? Get working on adding her product listings- a tall order, considering that selling crafting materials can mean a BUNCH of little SKUs to set up. While the number of SKUs she would be starting with wouldn't be as much as she needed to fill the shelves of a brick and mortar, it was still a lot, and it took Tiffany quite a bit of time to get them all set up and fine-tuned.

One of the first things we did was chat about the goals of the website- after all, we'd just accomplished the adventure of her brand identity, and it was a perfect moment to revisit Tiffany's goals to make sure they would align with her new website. 

Once we had chatted about her goals for the website, I sourced a few themes and walked through the pros and cons of each. Tiffany chose a theme that is known for loading quickly, has an intuitive search function, a robust mega menu, and the ever-important mobile experience. 

Home Page for Paper Hearts Market on mobile devices on teal patterned background

Home Page on mobile

Mockup image of Paper Hearts Market Subcollection page on a pink desktop computer with a bird decor piece on a wooden desktop with a white retro chair in the foreground

Subcollection page

The beauty of craft supplies is their versatility- one can use an adhesive on a paper project, or a mixed media project. But craft supplies can have a tendency to become unruly, making it tough for shoppers to not only find what they're looking for, but tough to discover new products with a similar purpose. Enter: the Subcollection page.

By adding this page in our plans for a customer's shopping journey, certain product categories got a quicker path to purchase. Customers who use a specific adhesive time and time again can find and purchase it quickly, among other go-to supplies.

But sometimes a customer's shopping journey doesn't start with the Home Page, or the mega menu. Which is why we added a Collection Page template that included filtering options- this would help shoppers explore products, and possibly discover new materials for crafting.

Paper Hearts Market Collection Page with filtering options

Post-Launch Update

While we had a ton of fun on this adventure, it ultimately helped Tiffany realize that she didn't want to pivot her passion into a business. So she closed down the website, social media, etc. and now spends her leisure time crafting- after all, isn't that the point of leisure time?