Project 1

Customer service and sales teams reported a high volume of phone calls from frustrated customers struggling to find spare parts on our website.

The Cost of Poor Information Architecture

• Support inefficiencies: Staff spent high-value hours manually navigating web pages for users or placing orders over the phone that should have been self-service "click-to-buy" transactions.
• Revenue leakage: Drop-offs directly lowered customer satisfaction and drove buyers to competitors with more accessible e-commerce catalogs.

To bridge the gap between our system layout and real-world user intent, I conducted internal research and competitive benchmarking.

Researching User Mental Models

I interviewed customer-facing teams to uncover the core modalities customers use to search for machine parts:

• The Expert: Searches directly by specific part number or exact technical name
• The Visual Seeker: Unfamiliar with nomenclature; requires visual confirmation to match the physical part
• The Model Owner: Only knows the overarching machine model name or type and needs a filtered drill-down path

Competitive & Content Audit

A comparative analysis of industry peers revealed that our spare parts were not integrated with a user-centered taxonomy. The existing user flow was disorienting, and product images were frequently unclear, low-resolution, or missing entirely.

I designed a dedicated, content-driven spare parts ecosystem that untangled our product discovery web.

Key Content Interventions

• Dedicated spare parts hub: Created an optimized landing page linked directly from the primary machine homepage to establish a clear starting point for returning buyers.
• Multi-modal navigation pathways: Structured categorization around the three identified user mental models, ensuring users could search via taxonomy (machine type), nomenclature (part name/number), or visuals (clear imagery).
• Contextual cross-linking: Established bidirectional pathways between specific machine product pages and their corresponding spare parts listings to capture user intent exactly when it occurs.

Strategic Constraints Balanced

Maintained existing URL structures to preserve SEO equity and integrated copy and UI elements seamlessly within the legacy brand design system.

After launching the redesigned spare parts architecture, the new content ecosystem achieved rapid, quantifiable success within the first year:

• Drastic support reduction: Calls to customer-facing staff for online navigation help dropped by ~85%, freeing teams for complex sales interactions.
• Accelerated self-service sales: Direct e-commerce revenue for the spare parts category increased by 29%.
• Elevated search authority: Through strategic SEO copywriting and clear hierarchy, traffic to the main machinery section grew by 18%, earning prominent visibility across traditional and AI-assisted search engines.