Clarity in High-Season Sales

Reducing Cognitive Load During Peak Traffic

The Company approached its holiday campaigns with a clear ambition: convert seasonal traffic into meaningful engagement and confident purchasing decisions.

Earlier campaigns assumed that high holiday intent meant users already understood the product value and needed only visual appeal and refreshed layouts to convert. In reality, users required reassurance, guidance, and clearer differentiation—especially under time pressure.

I led UX research and usability testing across successive holiday campaigns, guiding their evolution from surface-level optimisation toward behaviourally informed experiences.

Surface Clarity

Primary Methods:

  • Remote usability testing (including five-second tests)
  • Targeted user interviews
  • Scroll-depth and click data analysis
  • Prototype evaluation of new layout variations by participants

Diagnosing Misalignment Through Usability Testing

The initial goal was direct: understand why a visually refined landing page failed to convert during high-stakes holiday moments.

Usability testing revealed that users were not lost; they were unconvinced. Under time pressure and emotional load, behaviour changed markedly. Users became more risk-averse, scanned less, and relied on quick heuristics.

This hesitation was often expressed as partial confidence rather than outright confusion: “After filtering, I was 80% confident I had found the right knife, but 20% of me still thought there might be a better one I’d missed.”

These patterns were not isolated. The same hesitation points reappeared across successive holiday seasons, particularly around uncertainty about product suitability, shipping timing, and gift appropriateness.

Quantitative data confirmed limited engagement beyond the first scroll. Qualitative sessions explained why: unmet expectations and delayed reassurance.

Designing for Decision

Primary Methods:

  • User journey mapping
  • Session replay analysis
  • Scroll and click behaviour tracking
  • Application of behavioural design principles

Reshaping the Journey with Behavioural Insight

With baseline issues identified, the focus shifted from diagnosis to intentional redesign.

One design direction was deliberately deprioritised: a visually dominant, hero-first layout that pushed explanatory content further down the page. Testing showed that users needed clearer value framing and decision aids earlier, not more visual emphasis.

Using behavioural principles, the journey was reshaped to reduce cognitive load, strengthen salience, and align content order with how decisions are made under pressure.

The landing page evolved from a static presentation into a sequence of deliberate decision moments, separating inspiration from commerce, elevating the Gift Finder, clarifying support pathways, and rewriting copy for rapid scanning.

Validating in Motion

Primary Methods:

  • Scenario-based usability testing
  • GA4 behavioural data review
  • ContentSquare heatmaps
  • A/B test planning
  • Device-specific observations
  • Feedback analysis from live prototypes

Real-Time Research During Campaign Rollout

Before launch, we conducted pre-live validation to refine nuance rather than uncover major flaws.

At one point, analytics suggested improved click-through on promotional elements. However, usability sessions revealed that many of these clicks were driven by uncertainty rather than true engagement. The tension was resolved by restructuring the hierarchy so promotional elements supported, rather than replaced, decision-critical content.

Scenario-based testing, behavioural analytics, and live feedback helped fine-tune the experience across devices and segments.

Reflection

A small change produced a disproportionate effect: introducing concise, high-salience value statements—warranty, gifting suitability, delivery certainty—directly above the product grid. This reduced early-journey hesitation and restored confidence.

This project was not about redesigning a landing page. It was about learning how people decide when attention is fragmented and stakes are high. Clarity, in these moments, is not aesthetic. It is functional.

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