Marketplace Design

Koru Distribution logo.

Designing a consignment marketplace storefront

Design Challenge

I designed a marketplace storefront for a distributor transitioning to a consignment business model via Nautical Commerce's platform, from an existing Shopify storefront.

My Role
Design storefront and update brand assets.
Deliverables
Page layouts, fonts, patterns, colors and implementation of home page specifically via CMS, for ease of maintenance.
Spiral pattern overlayed on Koru's products

Product Listing Page

Screenshot of a product listing page the Koru storefront

The challenge of user-generated content

Marketplace operators like Koru get a random assortment of media from each supplier. This raises several user-generated content problems that a marketplace has to accomodate:

  • Putting text on image backgrounds, even with a scrim, is sub-optimal; using a solid contrasting background is always a safe approach.
  • Considering images in standard aspect ratios, but not assuming that's what we'll get. The safest bet is to use an approach such as background-size:cover while recommending optimal sizes.
  • Plan for square brand logos, versus circles.
  • Variant names duplicating attribute values. Guidelines might help, but manual work was required here.
  • Long brand and category descriptions pushing the boundaries of any components: plan for them to grow.

Product Detail Page

Screenshot of a product detail page the Koru storefront
Screenshot of the Koru storefront home page

I'm a Toronto-based product manager and product designer who has toured the tech industry with a background in computer science, across a broad range of roles.

Along the way, I've discovered my underlying passion is in the crafting of products that make peoples' lives better.