B2C E-commerce Redesign
I Love Dooney (ILD) is Dooney and Bourke’s discount product portal. It is based on the Salesforce platform and was scheduled for a design overhaul in 2018.
This ILD UX design project leveraged much of the discovery information I had been a part of during the 2017 Dooney.com redesign project effort. While there were some important distinctions between the two digital experiences (e.g. more fiscally aware shoppers for ILoveDooney.com) the redesign was fairly straight forward with a focus on promoting discount opportunities.

Grid System
Establishing a baseline foundation for content layout
Bootstrap has become a popular grid system in today’s responsive world. The original implementation of the ILoveDooney.com experience took advantage of this grid system and the SOW for the redesign effort required the reuse of the grid AS-IT-WAS. In some places the grid had been modified to accommodate various third-party plugins.
There was no grid documentation (standards) available from the first ILoveDooney.com implementation so I took a stab at detailing the high-points of the grid before jumping into content and navigation redesign exercises. I used Google Chrome Inspector to scrutinize the base AS-IT-WAS grid setup. I then shared my findings with the offshore engineering team to ensure cross-functional team alignment.

User-centered Design
Discovery Stage
Extensive User-centered design efforts had gone into the 2017 redesign of the Dooney flagship website and the client wished to leverage as much of that work effort as possible for the 2018 redesign of ILoveDooney.com.
So we had to ask ourselves, what makes the ILD experience different from the flagship experience and how do we preserve those distinctions? What makes the experiences similar?
In our review, we found that two distinguishing differences were important to note:
- The I Love Dooney user possessed a tendency to be more frugal with their disposable income; they were more savvy with their money and valued saving money more than possessing the latest trend. More importantly, they were willing to search both the Dooney.com and the ILD.com web sites before making a purchase decision.
- The main purpose of ILD.com was to offload legacy products at extreme discounts.
THE “FRUGAL” ONE
Amy Sanders
Age: Early 30’s
Occupation: Clerical Admin
Status: Single
Location: Miami, FL
Income: ~$65,000 / year
Fashion: Traditional values
- Visits both portals before decision 80%
- Online Shopping 75%
- Mobile Apps 60%
- Social Networking 90%
Key Findings
Using web metrics, affinity mapping, ethnographic research and customer polling from the 2017 Dooney.com redesign effort, we were able to confirm that almost 80% of ILD shoppers were likely to visit both Dooney.com and ILoveDooney.com within the same session and before making a purchase decision.
- Visits both portals before decision 80%
So why put common user interface controls in different places across the two digital properties? There was no quantifiable benefit to re-positioning, relabeling or otherwise altering ILD’s common UI any differently than had been implemented for Dooney.com.
Discovery Stage
Extensive User-centered design efforts had gone into the 2017 redesign of the Dooney flagship website and the client wished to leverage as much of that work effort as possible for the 2018 redesign of ILoveDooney.com.
So we had to ask ourselves, what makes the ILD experience different from the flagship experience and how do we preserve those distinctions? What makes the experiences similar?
In our review, we found that two distinguishing differences were important to note:
- The I Love Dooney user possessed a tendency to be more frugal with their disposable income; they were more savvy with their money and valued saving money more than possessing the latest trend. More importantly, they were willing to search both the Dooney.com and the ILD.com web sites before making a purchase decision.
- The main purpose of ILD.com was to offload legacy products at extreme discounts.
THE “FRUGAL” ONE
Amy Sanders
Age: Early 30’s
Occupation: Clerical Admin
Status: Single
Location: Miami, FL
Income: ~$65,000 / year
Fashion: Traditional values
- Visits both portals before decision 80%
- Online Shopping 75%
- Mobile Apps 60%
- Social Networking 90%

Key Findings
Using web metrics, affinity mapping, ethnographic research and customer polling from the 2017 Dooney.com redesign effort, we were able to confirm that almost 80% of ILD shoppers were likely to visit both Dooney.com and ILoveDooney.com within the same session and before making a purchase decision.
- Visits both portals before decision 80%
So why put common user interface controls in different places across the two digital properties? There was no quantifiable benefit to re-positioning, relabeling or otherwise altering ILD’s common UI any differently than had been implemented for Dooney.com.
ACCENT COLOR
#C2213A
Content Design
ILD.com already leveraged a variety of content isotopes; many of which were scheduled to simply adopt the new accent color. Four new content isotopes were scheduled to be ported over from the 2017 Dooney.com redesign project. All four, were going to require additional content elements that helped reinforce the discount savings opportunity found exclusively on ILD.com.
The four content isotopes included:
- Our Featured Collections (hub)
- A Featured Collection (product line focus)
- A Featured Collection (banner treatment)
- Style Spotlight
Content Isotope Review: Our Featured Collections
Would cover up too much of the product image.
Better, but not quite there. Still covers up too much of the image.
This has potential. Let’s explore further…
This is our favorite approach. Refine more and move to high fidelity.
Recap & Outcome
I worked on the 2017 Dooney.com overhaul effort and the iOS native build. The user-centered design momentum we achieved on those projects went along way into expediting the work this I Love Dooney redesign. This project was pretty turn-and-burn from a UI design perspective. It launched on-time and on-budget.
Dooney & Bourke makes high-end handbags and accessories, mostly for women but also for men. Dooney products are sold in department stores, online and by catalog (Glassdoor.com).
Industry:
Consumer Products Manufacturing
Competitors:
Brooks Brothers, Vineyard Vines, PacSun
Revenue:
$25 – 50 million (USD) per year
Methodology
Agile / Scrum
Back-end System
Salesforce
Front-end Framework
Bootstrap 3.0 (modified)
Development
Offshore
I worked on the Dooney.com overhaul effort and the iOS native build. The user-centered design momentum we achieved on those projects went along way into expediting the work this I Love Dooney redesign. This project was pretty turn-and-burn from a UI design perspective. It launched on-time and on-budget.
Dooney & Bourke makes high-end handbags and accessories, mostly for women but also for men. Dooney products are sold in department stores, online and by catalog (Glassdoor.com).
Web:
ilovedooney.com
Size:
51 – 200 employees
Headquarters:
Norwalk, CT
Industry:
Consumer Products Manufacturing
Competitors:
Brooks Brothers, Vineyard Vines, PacSun
Revenue:
$25 – 50 million (USD) per year
Methodology
Agile / Scrum
Back-end System
Salesforce
Front-end Framework
Bootstrap 3.0 (modified)
Development
Offshore
"The more engaged users are... the more functionality an application can sustain."
-Jakob Nielsen