Chichkhane : Jewellery Retailer website
Took a jewellery retailer's 2010-era website and rebuilt it as a luxury e-commerce experience worth the brand.
Project Details
- Responsive Web (Mobile-First)
- Luxury Retail
- Client
- Joaillerie Chichkhane
- Role
- Product Designer
- Timeline
- October – November 2023
- Platform
- Responsive Web (Mobile-First)
- Industry
- Retail / E-commerce / Luxury
Business Need
Joaillerie Chichkhane is a luxury jewellery and watch retailer. Their website was built in 2010 — functional for its time, but by 2023 it was actively working against the brand. Declining online sales triggered the redesign brief: fix the mismatch between the physical store's premium positioning and a cluttered, dated digital presence.
Problem
The website looked like what it was: a 13-year-old build with no visual hierarchy, poor product imagery presentation, and navigation that made browsing a chore. For a luxury retailer, the website is the first impression — and this one was communicating "bargain bin" to users expecting "Maison." Product discovery was broken, filtering was limited, and the visual language bore zero resemblance to what the brand actually sold.
Goals
- Rebuild navigation and product discoverability to reduce bounce rate and keep users in the funnel
- Establish a visual identity that matches the brand's luxury positioning
- Improve the end-to-end shopping experience — from landing to product detail to feel premium, clean, and trustworthy
Project Strategy
- Research before screens — interviews and empathy mapping to find where and why users were dropping off
- Current-state journey map to surface structural problems, not just visual ones
- Information architecture rebuilt from data, not assumption
- Wireframes and flows before any high-fidelity work — logic first, aesthetics second
- Design system foundations (typography, colour, spacing, components) built in parallel so the final UI is systematic, not decorative
The old website
Built in 2010 and untouched since. The site had accumulated all the symptoms of a product that nobody owns: inconsistent spacing, no typographic hierarchy, product photography displayed without any intentional framing, and navigation that required effort to parse. For a brand selling watches and jewellery at luxury price points, it was a credibility problem before the user even reached a product page.
Research
Before sketching anything, I needed to understand who was actually using the site and what was stopping them from buying. User personas and empathy maps built from interviews revealed two primary user types: gift buyers under time pressure who needed fast filtering, and enthusiasts browsing for specific pieces who expected a curated, editorial experience. Neither group was being served.
From research to structure
The journey map made the failure points concrete broken discovery, no clear path to product detail, an untouched checkout. The navigation was rebuilt from the data up.
Wireframes & user flows
Structure before aesthetics. Early wireframes focused entirely on layout logic where products live, how filtering surfaces, what the path from landing page to product detail looks like. The user flow for browse-to-purchase was kept to the minimum viable steps: every screen had to earn its place.
Final product
The redesigned website treats product photography as the primary design element — large, clean, properly framed. Navigation is reduced to what users actually need. Filtering is prominent and functional. The typographic system creates clear hierarchy between categories, product names, and supporting detail. On mobile, the experience maintains the same logic with a layout optimised for browse and scroll behaviour.
The design system was built in parallel: type scale, colour palette, spacing, and a component library covering the full purchase path. Everything systematic, nothing decorative.
Outcomes
Bounce rate dropped 15% post-launch. Usability tests with 10 users returned consistent qualitative feedback — the redesigned experience read as premium and aligned with the brand's physical presence. The navigation restructure eliminated the main discovery blockers identified in research.
Prototype