Transitioning towards a Single Page Application for a fashion e-commerce : Qualitative and quantitative analysis of the transition's impact on business performance

Abstract: Over the course of the last few years, the fashion industry hasbegun to focus more resources on their digital transition. For afashion e-commerce business, it is essential to know whether ornot to invest money and time in building a modern webapplication. This master's thesis aims at finding practical resultson how transitioning from a multi-page website towards a SinglePage Application can have an impact on the businessperformances of the company, as measured by ConversionRate, Page Views and Gross Sales. In collaboration with thedevelopment and product team of a fashion company, thismaster's thesis is based on the six-months development of a newSingle Page Application using the Javascript framework React.js,building on known User-Experience Design principles andHuman-Computer Interface heuristics. The live data collectionfrom the website's audience allowed a quantitative analysis ofthe transition's effect on business performance, which showedpositive impact on business performance. A qualitative usersurvey was then conducted in order to further elaborate on thecauses of the aforementioned impact: all respondents praisedthe Single Page Application as compared to the multi-pagewebsite, and noted lower Response Time, efficient filter-andsearchsystem and high user interaction as advantages thatplayed in favour of their browsing experience and their will-tobuya product. The impact of lowering Response Time evenmore was discussed, as well as the different limitations due tothe scope of this thesis. A list of user suggestions for furtherimprovements was also compiled.