The existing experience felt cluttered and lacked the clarity expected from a luxury brand. I redesigned the ecommerce journey to reduce visual noise, improve hierarchy, and create a more refined, premium experience.
Industry
Beauty, Wellness & Retail Canada
Duration
8–12 weeks 2025–26
Role
UX-UI Designer Strategy, Information Architecture, UI Design
Team
Project Managers, Developers, QA, and Clients
Case Study Overview
The redesign of Rennai's digital experience, built to carry a luxury flagship store's feel online and support growth beyond it.
The focus was product discovery, service booking, and usability, all during a fast platform migration with a strict launch date.
01My role across UX strategy, interaction design, and visual direction.
02The business: a curated, multi-brand luxury beauty retailer in Canada.
03Why the old site lagged so far behind the store.
04Four interventions: navigation, service booking, luxury UI, and designing with real data, with old and new side by side.
05Outcomes and what I learned.
My Role & Involvement
As the primary UX/UI designer, I led the end-to-end redesign of the brand's digital experience, defining UX strategy, interaction design, and visual direction.
Strategy
Defined the information architecture and sitemap for products, brands, services, and events.
Interaction
Designed navigation, listing, product, cart, and the service booking flow.
Visual direction
Set a restrained, image-led luxury look that the whole site could share.
Engineering
Worked with front-end and back-end teams to fit designs to PIM and ERP data during migration.
About the Business
Rennai is a Canada-based luxury beauty retailer offering a curated mix of premium beauty, skincare, fragrance, and wellness brands, along with in-store services.
The flagship store delivered a strong in-person experience. The website needed to carry that same feeling online, and make it easy to shop and book.
The Problem
Despite a strong in-store experience, the old website was not meeting business or user needs:
01Product and brand discovery was difficult across a large multi-brand catalog.
02Service offerings lacked clarity and were hard to book online.
03The UI did not reflect a luxury or premium brand identity.
04Online sales were significantly lower than in-store.
The challenge
Designing a luxury experience for diverse beauty and wellness customers across age groups, under tight timelines and complex data constraints.
10
Core page types redesigned, from homepage to booking.
Homepage
Product listing
Product detail
Navigation & menu
Category listing
Brand directory
Cart & checkout
Service booking
Events listing
Content pages
Strategic UX Interventions
01
Simplified Multi-Brand Navigation
The navigation was redesigned to make a large, multi-brand catalog easy to explore without overwhelming people.
Reworked global navigation and category hierarchy to reduce cognitive load.
Separated brands, product categories, and services more clearly.
Designed navigation to scale with growing inventory and future brand additions.
Improved wayfinding through consistent labels and predictable paths.
BeforeLong text lists with no imagery, and services pushed into a separate "Book Services" button.AfterOne navigation bar for products, brands, services, and events.
The new information architecture. Shop, brands, and services all feed one listing and product pattern.
02
Clear Service Booking Experience
Booking was fragmented by a poorly integrated third-party system. I redesigned it around patterns people already know from shopping.
One master service listing with filters, instead of hundreds of separate service pages.
Services grouped into categories and subcategories that map directly to filter logic.
PLP-style layouts (images, filters, clear hierarchy) for browsing services.
Simpler flows that lean less on fragile third-party functionality.
Service booking flow, from the menu to a confirmed booking.
BeforeA plain list per category. Little to compare beyond name, time, and price.AfterServices browse like products, with images, brand, length, and price, plus filters.
One listing for every service. Categories and filters do the work separate pages used to.
03
Elevated Luxury UI Direction
A premium, contemporary direction where restraint and hierarchy carry the experience.
Imagery firstLarge-format product and brand visuals lead every page.
Quiet structureTypography and spacing guide attention and cut visual noise.
Intentional layoutsCalm compositions rather than dense or decorative ones.
One languageA consistent visual system across pages to build trust.
Product page: the product gets half the screen, with brand, price, shade, and purchase kept quiet beside it.
Category listing: large, even tiles with just brand, name, and price.Homepage: one campaign up top, then four clear ways into the shop.
04
Data-Driven Design Collaboration
Design decisions were shaped by backend data realities throughout the project.
Real sourcesNavigation, filters, and listings aligned with actual data sources.
PIM & ERPDesigns adapted to PIM and ERP constraints during migration.
Iterate togetherWorked with front-end and back-end teams to validate feasibility.
Launch-readyChose solutions that could ship over ideal patterns that couldn't.
Results
The project is in development and hasn't launched yet. Decisions were validated through stakeholder reviews and technical feasibility discussions. The expected outcomes:
Easier discovery
A navigation and listing structure that makes a large catalog feel browsable.
Bookable services
Services you can find, compare, and book in the same way you shop.
A luxury feel online
A site that finally matches the calm and polish of the flagship store.
Key Learnings
Luxury digital experiences are defined by restraint, hierarchy, and content focus.
Clarity over complexity
This project reinforced the importance of prioritizing clarity and structure over complexity, especially across a large catalog and a fragile booking system.
Build the foundation early
Investing in a scalable foundation early reduced future risk and left room for new brands, services, and content.
