Overview
Cirkul’s DTC homepage redesign focused on balancing brand education for first-time visitors with fast, intuitive shopping for returning customers, ensuring the homepage supported acquisition without slowing high-intent users.
Role
UX Designer
Industry
Food & Beverage, B2C
Team
Developers, Brand, Designers, PM’s
Tools
Figma, FigmaMake, Jira, Optimizely, HotJar
Timeline
2024 - 2025
My Scope of Work
Led definition of the MVP homepage requirements, informed by stakeholder workshops and performance insights
Partnered with multidisciplinary teams including engineering, brand voice, and creative to align scope, ensure feasibility, and maintain a cohesive brand experience
Owned content strategy and page layout, shaping information hierarchy and structure to support both new and returning customer journeys
Design Impact
Identifying the Problem
Cirkul’s homepage needed to serve as a primary entry point for both first-time visitors and returning customers, but the current experience wasn’t effectively supporting either audience.
The homepage lacked a deliberate balance between brand education and a fast path to shopping, limiting its ability to drive new user conversion while still serving the majority returning audience.
How Might We...
Redesign Cirkul’s homepage to clearly communicate the who, what, and why for first-time visitors while enabling returning customers to shop quickly and confidently?
Goals
The goal was to create Cirkul’s first scalable design system to unify the brand, align cross-functional teams, and accelerate product delivery across web and mobile.
The Approach
Discovery
To balance the homepage’s dual purpose—educating new visitors while enabling fast shopping for returning customers—we aligned cross-functionally on what the homepage needed to accomplish, then validated changes through a mix of performance and behavioral signals. The approach focused on strengthening the above-the-fold value proposition, restructuring content hierarchy for clearer storytelling, and prioritizing direct product pathways for high-intent users.
Testing Methods
To address the homepage’s role as a primary acquisition entry point, the hero prioritizes who we are, what we offer, and the core problem we solve (hydration). The visual system leads with a premium product-forward presentation.
Provide fast, high-intent users a clear path to shop early—before continuing the broader story—while giving new visitors a quick snapshot of Cirkul’s product ecosystem.
Early product lanes to support returning users who want to shop immediately, reducing decision fatigue for the ~80% returning audience.
Scannable category layout to help new users quickly grasp what’s available
Catalog breadth surfaced upfront to build confidence and encourage exploration without overwhelming the page
This section builds trust and understanding for first-time visitors by expanding on Cirkul’s value, the product system, and why it matters—without overwhelming the top of the page or slowing high-intent shoppers.
Content is broken into small, digestible modules that support quick, benefit-led comprehension in under five seconds, followed by simple, visual explanations of how the system works. Step-by-step visuals paired with real product usage reduce confusion and build confidence, making the system feel intuitive and relatable.
Introduce Autoship as a high-value, low-friction path to recurring purchases, boosting customer retention and lifetime value (LTV) while giving both new and returning users a compelling reason to commit long-term.
The Outcome
To evaluate whether the redesigned homepage improved new user acquisition without introducing friction for returning shoppers, we measured performance across engagement, depth, and conversion outcomes.
Bounce Rate
Following launch, homepage bounce rate decreased from 52.18% → 28.26%, indicating stronger above-the-fold clarity and improved first-touch engagement—especially for first-time visitors evaluating Cirkul for the first time.
Impactful User Engagement
Behavioral Analysis
Hotjar scroll heatmaps showed increased engagement depth, with more users reaching key mid-page content. Scroll reach increased from 45% → 58% at the 50% scroll threshold, suggesting improvements in content hierarchy, pacing, and overall curiosity to continue exploring.
Scroll Depth (at the 50% threshold)
Revenue from First-Time Purchasers
The redesign contributed to improved acquisition performance, with revenue from first-time purchasers increasing by X% (or $X) and first-time buyer conversion trending upward post-launch. This reinforced that the homepage balance—brand education + early product discovery—better supported new users in moving from understanding to purchase.
Conversion
First-time buyer conversion: 4.65% → 4.78% (+2.8% relative lift)
Conversion
Revenue per visitor: $5.94 → $6.09 (+2.5% relative lift)
Conversion
Achieved across ~150k sessions in a 2-week A/B test 50/50 split
These incremental but directionally strong gains reflect sustainable progress on an already-healthy baseline. The modest lift in first-time buyer conversion shows that the above-the-fold value proposition and immediate shop lanes successfully reduced early friction for new visitors, while the revenue per visitor improvement confirms we preserved (and slightly enhanced) momentum for returning shoppers (~80% of traffic).
Final Thoughts
This redesign emphasized the homepage’s role as a hybrid experience, not a single-purpose landing page. By structuring the page around progressive disclosure, we supported both acquisition and high-intent shopping behavior in one cohesive flow.
Future iterations would focus on personalization by visitor type and continued experimentation across:
value messaging
product lane prioritization (Utilize Shopify Apps)
evaluate module-level click-through rate (CTR) and drop-off behavior across key homepage lanes
