UX Designer
Project overview
Naturelings is an artisanal brand dedicated to natural wellbeing, aromatherapy, and botanical goods. The brand’s vision is to reconnect people with nature through mindfully handcrafted products. To scale their mission, the brand required a digital presence that mirrored their handcrafted quality and made their offerings accessible to a wider audience.
Naturelings is a small-batch, plant-based wellbeing brand offering handmade skincare, haircare, and homeware products.The goal of this project was to create a responsive e-commerce experience that brought the brand values to life, helped customers confidently choose the right product, and made purchasing feel simple and trustworthy.
My role
In this project, I served as the end-to-end product designer, bridging the gap between user needs and final execution. My process began with foundational research to uncover user motivations and goals, which informed the overarching UX design and information architecture. From there, I transitioned into UI and visual design, crafting a cohesive aesthetic that aligned with the brand identity. To bring the vision to life, I handled the technical implementation by building and launching the final site on Squarespace.​
Naturelings is a small-batch, plant-based wellbeing brand offering handmade skincare, haircare, and homeware products.The goal of this project was to create a responsive e-commerce experience that brought the brand values to life, helped customers confidently choose the right product, and made purchasing feel simple and trustworthy.
The challenge
As the designer, my goal was to bridge the gap between handmade charm and e-commerce reliability. The challenge wasn't just to sell a product, it was to build a digital sanctuary where eco-conscious customers felt the same sense of calm they would while browsing a physical apothecary.
Project Goals
Create a responsive e-commerce experience that:
Approach and key UX decisions
Discover ↔ Define ↔ Design ↔ Deliver
Discover
Business objectives
I collaborated closely with the founder to understand their business and the vision they had for the website. Their objectives included:
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Communicate the brand’s philosophy and story
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Make all of their products accessible for purchase online
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Enable customers to leave feedback about their experience with a product
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Create space for the brand to share wellness-related content
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Allow customers to get in touch via the website
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Surface the brand’s social presence
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Products and ingredients inventory
Next, I catalogued all of Naturelings' products, capturing the full list of ingredients / materials used and any existing descriptions they had for each.
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Competitive landscape review
To understand the landscape, I identified a number of brands with similar philosophy, values, and products - as advised by Naturelings and by researching online. Analysing their content, structure and patters helped inform the information architecture and user journeys of Naturelings’ website.
User goals
To understand the target audience and their motivations for choosing a particular brand and product, I conducted interviews with the founder and moderated focus groups with existing and prospective customers. Key insights revealed a strong desire for a mindful lifestyle, supported by evidence and ethical practices. Their core motivations included:
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Finding natural alternatives to synthetic products
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Understanding the specific benefits of botanical ingredients
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Supporting small artisanal craftsmanship
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Making environmentally responsible purchasing decisions
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Validating efficacy through community feedback
Define
Personas
Insights from the research informed the creation of user personas, the purpose of which was to ensure experience design decisions were aligned with customer intent and addressed their goals.
UX Design Objectives
I mapped business requirements and user goals to specific design objectives:
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Integrate the brand's philosophy into each customer touchpoint with the website.
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Establish an atmosphere evoking that of an apothecary, a sense of calm while shopping.
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Ensure every product page provides detailed benefit-focused description, including full list of ingredients, to meet the target audience's need for transparency and wellness education.
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Integrate customer reviews directly into product pages to build trust through validation.
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Create dedicated spaces for wellness content that highlights the brand's expertise.
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Organise products into logical categories to aid find-ability and limit main menu items to prevent cognitive overload.
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Provide a uniform experience across all devices.
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Maintain high-contrast text and straightforward writing style to ensure the site is accessible to diverse user groups.
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Content and IA
The product inventory I captured, along with the business objectives and competitor analysis guided the definition of required content and its structure. After defining the information architecture (IA) skeleton, I drafted the content for each page, collaborating with the founder to arrive at a version we were happy with for launch, as well as a list of required images and visual elements.
User flows
Key user tasks were mapped into high-level flows to identify the interactive requirements for each page.
Design
Low-fidelity design
The content and its structure, along with the mapped user flows guided low-fidelity design explorations for each page, where layout, content hierarchy and interaction elements were considered. Alternative options were reviewed and evaluated with the founder, allowing us to align on optimal structural solutions before committing to visual design.
Interaction design
Wireframes of the agreed designs were mapped to the user flows to form the interaction blueprint of the experience, which guided the technical implementation. This milestone, as with the rest, was presented to the founder, refined and approved before moving onto the next.
Visual design style guide
A style guide was drafted to ensure brand consistency and support high-fidelity design explorations. The initial version was further refined once colours, fonts, and elements were reviewed in the context of the interface.
High-fidelity design
The detailed designs incorporated agreed content, images, visual assets, fonts and colours. They were refined and agreed with the founder.
Deliver
UX Specs
Annotated versions of the designs were created to guide their technical implementation and ensure thorough QA testing.
Squarespace technical implementation
A suitable e-commerce template was selected as a starting point and each page built via Squarespace's visual interface, supplemented with custom CSS overrides where necessary.
Reflection
Designing Naturelings was a valuable experience that reinforced the importance of aligning brand values with practical e-commerce needs. Working closely with the founder highlighted how small decisions in content, hierarchy, and tone can directly influence trust and confidence when purchasing wellbeing products. One key thing I learnt was the balance between storytelling and clarity, ensuring the site felt calm and considered without sacrificing usability or transparency.
Outcomes
ð–£ A calm, trust-led e-commerce experience: The final website translates Naturelings’ handcrafted, nature-first ethos into a digital space that feels considered and reassuring, supporting mindful browsing and confident purchasing.
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ð–£ Clear product education and transparency: Detailed product pages with benefit-focused descriptions, ingredient lists, and customer reviews help users understand what they’re buying and why, reinforcing trust and informed decision-making.
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ð–£ A fully delivered, responsive website: The project resulted in a live, responsive Squarespace site, taken from concept through to launch, providing Naturelings with a functional platform to sell products, share content, and grow their online presence.