From Discovery to Purchase: Improving the User Experience for Buyers in eCommerce

Abstract: The Internet has revolutionized many areas of our lives. New forms of exchanging and retrieving information, making business and communication in general have been made possible with the Internet and have gone through a rapid development since its creation. In an age of nearly ubiquitous access to the Internet and a majority of the western world actively using social media, retail markets have changed, too. But compared to the rapidly changing services in other sectors, retail businesses have only converted an existing model to a new technology rather than coming up with a new one. Social Commerce is an approach that wants to change that. It takes into account lessons learned from social media and shifting marketing strategies and tries to create a better shopping experience for customers while giving brands and fashion influencers a new platform to engage with them. This thesis project uses literature from different fields such as interaction design, online marketing and fashion along with user interviews to identify the most important aspects that will lead towards a more social online shopping experience, particularly in fashion. It is conducted in collaboration with the local start-up Apprl (www.apprl.com) and includes an implementation part of realizing the identified most promising features as part of the agile development process within the company. The field of social commerce is promising to radically change the way we buy things online and Apprl is one of many examples trying to make that happen.