Bare Bones Solutions E-commerce Optimization
For the second half of the SAIT and Tacit Edge Applied Product Management Program (June-July 2025), a UX Design student and I were paired with Bare Bones Solutions, a Calgary start-up that has made animal bone degreasing easier and faster with a brand new product. From the first meeting with the owner and user interviews, it became clear that the product is great for its intended purpose, and the main issue to prioritize was the website, which didn't have a purchase button. The website also had information laid out in an overwhelming way with walls of text or unlabelled photos, and fixing these issues was critical - Our hypothesis was that the redesigning the website will increase traffic and repeat visits, and generate more sales.
My partner and I updated webpages by creating and editing duplicate non-live pages, and tested these with users from two main groups - employees of post-secondaries or museums, who have more complex processes to try and buy new methods, and folks who degrease animal bones regularly for their profession or hobby (taxidermy, vulture culture, bone art creatives, and hunters). We got largely positive feedback from users on the website edits and only minor changes suggested.
My partner and I otherwise had to create 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.
I stayed on with Bare Bones in a casual volunteer capacity after the program finished to complete the website updates from tester feedback, and implement a purchase page. I also worked on an Alberta Innovates grant application, and we’ll see where that takes the company.
Previous Website.
As you can see from these screenshots, Bare Bones’ e-commerce funnel didn’t do well to facilitate purchases. Where there should be a Purchase button, there was only a Contact button and Contact-for-Sales messaging. The header on the home page is visually quite loud, the walls of text were overwhelming, and the lack of organization for result photos led to disjointed storytelling of how helpful the degreaser is. Despite this product having the potential to be truly game-changing in its niche, all of this increases abandonment from the website, which leaves users’ problems unsolved and the owner with low sales.
Project Edits.
Highlights from the 6-week project timeframe include:
Getting testers’ thoughts on a homepage intro video - this was well received
Organizing pages with walls of text into an accordion, which received great feedback!
Organizing photos into three categories (nicer Results photos, Before and After photos from the owner, and Customer Result photos) with information about them to really show how well the degreaser works - this was well received by testers
After testing updated pages, the owner made the Information and Product Development pages live right away because of how much he liked their information being re-organized into an accordion!
Latest Updates.
As of September 9, 2025, all of the final edits are live!
An updated colour scheme that’s more user friendly
Anchor links and back-to-top buttons that have been added to longer pages
The vision statement that I created being added to the About Us page
An example of more organized photos with a corresponding testimonial mixed in
And last but not least - a functional POS!
