A significant portion of Vistaprint's business card customers prefer to upload their own designs. At the project's inception, our existing system lacked a straightforward upload path directly from the business card category page. This forced many customers into a convoluted workflow: selecting a template, navigating to the design studio, deleting template graphics, and then uploading their files. The inherent friction highlighted the critical need for a more explicit and intuitive design path for these users.
Our strategic design thinking began by identifying essential resources for customers to achieve optimal print results. This included not only a clear file upload mechanism but also comprehensive specifications for all business card shapes and sizes, downloadable templates for common design software, and vital tips addressing prevalent file preparation errors.
Following an initial kickoff, I developed rough sketches for the full bleed upload page. These sketches served as both foundational pre-design flow outlines and simple wireframes for the new upload interface.
With wireframes established, we moved to rigorous testing. We conducted a series of online usability tests using interactive mockups, iterating after each round to hone in on the ideal design for the full bleed upload path.
During this iterative process, our strategic scope expanded to encompass the entire design flow. We addressed critical questions: How would customers seamlessly select paper stock or specialty finishes like metallic ink—options typically chosen earlier in a standard Vistaprint workflow? Our innovative solution involved repositioning these selections to the end of the design process, integrating a visualization tool that allowed customers to immediately see how their choices would impact their design.
Ultimately, this exercise in strategic design thinking delivered a streamlined trim upload solution, empowering customers with the confidence that their designs would be produced to the highest quality.
