Bare Bones Solutions E-commerce Optimization
My Role
PM and project lead. I collaborated on this 6-week client engagement with a UX Design partner — I owned discovery, scope management, stakeholder alignment, and the product vision and roadmap. My partner assisted with the design execution. After the program ended, I stayed on as a volunteer with Bare Bones Solutions to see the work through to launch.
The Problem
Bare Bones Solutions makes an animal bone degreasing product that genuinely works, but their website wasn't converting visitors into buyers. There was no purchase button. Information was dense and disorganized. Photos were unlabelled. The site was creating friction at every step of the funnel, leaving users' problems unsolved and the founder with low sales despite having a strong product.
Our hypothesis: re-designing the website to reduce friction and add a clear purchase path will increase traffic, repeat visits, and sales.
Discovery
Before touching the design, we ran 9 user interviews to understand who was actually coming to the site and what they needed.
This surfaced three distinct user segments with meaningfully different needs:
Institutional buyers (museum staff, post-secondary employees) — these users needed detailed product information and professional justification before they could initiate a purchase. Their process was longer and required trust-building before conversion.
Professional users (taxidermists, hunters, bone art creatives, vulture culture) — these users were more purchase-ready but were being blocked by the missing buy button and confusing site structure.
Hobbyist users (taxidermists, hunters, bone art creatives, vulture culture) — these users were also more purchase-ready, and engage in bone degreasing less frequently than professionals.
This segmentation directly shaped our prioritization. We focused first on the information architecture and credibility of the product pages — because both segments needed that — before building out the purchase flow.
Skills Demonstrated
User research · Segmentation · Discovery · Scope management · Stakeholder alignment · Squarespace · Usability testing · Product vision · Roadmap · Grant writing support
Previous Website.
As these screenshots show, the site had no purchase path, overwhelming walls of text, a visually loud header, and disorganized result photos, all of which increased abandonment and left users unable to act.
What We Built & Tested.
We created and tested duplicate non-live pages with users from all segments. Key changes tested:
Homepage intro video — well received across both segments; added context quickly without requiring users to read
Accordion layout for dense pages — strong positive feedback; the owner made two pages live immediately after seeing tester reactions
Re-organized photo sections — grouped into Results, Before & After, and Customer Results with context, which helped tell the product story more clearly
Final Result.
After user testing and client review, all edits went live:
Updated colour scheme for better readability
Anchor links and back-to-top buttons on longer pages
Vision statement added to About Us page
Reorganized photos with testimonials integrated
A functioning point-of-sale — the most critical missing piece
My UX partner and I created a 7-minute video presentation to review our project journey, and to share a vision and roadmap for Bare Bones Solutions to move forward with. Beyond the 6-week project, I supported a successful Alberta Innovates grant application for the company.
