What if you always knew what size sneaker to buy, without trying it on? Would you be more likely to purchase them?
This is a question I have been asking myself for years. Constantly having to go into a physical store to see how well a shoe will fit just became impossible. There must be a better way to solve this problem, especially during a pandemic.
Sneaker collectors and fans are often under time limits when purchasing limited number releases of sneakers. With online raffles shoppers don’t have the liberty of being able to try on the shoe. They need to make a decision now and whilst online.
I decided to focus on the Sneaker collector and fan segment of the shoe market. This helped to focus the problem further as focusing on other styles of shoe such as heels and boots came with further complexities.
Having identified a user segment, I jumped straight into interviews to validate the problem.
The results were just as I had thought:
Through competitive analysis it was clear that there are a few other competitors in the market. These competitors all had solutions for measuring a foot and providing shoe size recommendations.
However, for some reason I didn’t feel confident that the size recommendations were going to be accurate. Something was off.
I decided to run moderated tests. The users confirmed that they lacked confidence with the onscreen size reccomendations. When probed further, I found that users turn to the sneaker community on Youtube and on forums for advice on sizes when they want a more accurate reccomendation.
With this information I focused on three core solutions: