Context
Designs for Health (DFH) is a health and nutrition company that provides professional-grade supplements to health practitioners across the United States and key international markets including China, Australia, and Canada. For more than thirty years, the company has maintained a practitioner-centered approach with a strong emphasis on quality, ongoing research, and the development of new product verticals. In recent years, DFH has been rated a #1 Practitioner Brand for Consumer Satisfaction (ConsumerLab.com) for multiple years, in annual surveys of vitamin and supplement users.
As consumer demographics shifted and pandemics raged, customers increasingly sought ways to purchase outside of practitioner channels and private-label partners. I worked to align DFH’s web, mobile, email, and social platforms to address those behavioral changes. A health-focused app was also developed as part of this broader digital initiative, though it is explored separately in another study that would be linked here, if completed.
Outcome
The overall project modernized DFH’s existing commerce website through a complete visual and structural update that improved clarity, navigation, and usability. The brand’s established reputation for professional quality and reliability shouldn't just stop at the product, so this effort also restructured site heuristics, refined UX patterns, and enhanced functionality to help customers more easily identify products that fit their individual health goals. After all, being healthy shouldn't be hard(er). Email and social initiatives were also redesigned in tandem to drive engagement, promote new product launches, and create a more consistent customer journey across touch points. A unified vision, for a unified product suite, across all digital channels. Even a few carrier pigeons here and there.
21% increase in Consumer Sales
B2C sales driven by digital channels increased significantly, contributing to an overall increase in consumer sales against declining sales in other sales categories within the first few quarters.
Average Order Size Increased
Improved heuristics and clearer presentation of health-benefits led to a higher spend per customer, with average order size increasing by a variable rate of 3 to 9% within the first few quarters.
FSA/HSA eligible sales doubled
The introduction of FSA/HSA-eligible tags for key products drove a significant increase in year-end sales, with eligible product at times doubling in purchase amount during FSA run-out periods.
In parallel, new strategies such as selective marketplace Amazon (e.g., higher markups outside of direct sales and practitioner resell on Amazon) expanded consumer reach without disrupting the company’s B2B foundation. Together, these efforts led to measurable improvements in sales performance, order value, and seasonal channel activity.
Problem
DFH’s website and supporting digital channels had fallen behind modern e-commerce expectations. The information architecture was not geared toward digital shop experience, product details were difficult to scan, and the overall experience made it harder for retail customers to explore and complete purchases efficiently. Because the digital platform itself was not a strategic focus, connected channels like email and social content were also limited in effectiveness, lacking the optimization and cohesion needed to drive consistent performance across campaigns. These gaps underscored the need for a stronger, more mature B2C experience within the primary DFH brand, while separate DTC initiatives for sub-brands continued to evolve on their own domains and are not covered in this study.
Process/Research
Site performance and analytics highlighted early drop-offs in navigation and checkout flows, lower-than-industry-average completion rates (around 20%), and limited engagement with product education content across web and mobile. Social metrics showed weaker conversion from referral traffic, indicating that users arriving through campaigns or social posts weren’t finding relevant or actionable information quickly. Email campaign data also revealed open rates below industry benchmarks (around 13%). Together, these compounding issues pointed to a single root cause — the entire digital experience, yes, but at the center the website. As both a direct seller, and partnering with resellers, there was a core need to right the ship on the high seas of digital experiences. Even more so when the heavy lifts were coming from more traditional campaigns, like print and in-office adverts, in a time where everyone everywhere (all at once,) were retreating to their homes. While, obviously, global pandemics are bad, not reacting properly to those rapidly changing economic and social trends would have been marketing and design malpractice.
Process/Design
Work focused on rebuilding the site’s information architecture to better connect product education more naturally with purchasing intent for consumers and inventory management for resellers. And, well, went through several redesigns, so you'll see slightly different versions out-of-order, but relevant to the corresponding section. Mobile layouts were corrected and brought up to modern standards, resolving usability issues that had limited engagement. A full transition to HubSpot introduced standardized templates that unified UX content and visual design for email, improving consistency and production speed. The entire experience was visually redesigned to establish a consistent tone, aesthetic, and structure across every customer touchpoint, not including the aforementioned carrier pigeons.
Process/Validation
Analytics over the following months showed steady gains in conversion rates, average order value, and engagement with on-site content. Traffic from refreshed email campaigns and coordinated social promotions outperformed previous efforts, indicating that clearer messaging and consistent visuals were reinforcing the e-commerce experience as an actual, well, experience. Performance data across all channels showed that structural improvements to the site and consistency with that direction across all channels, were driving stronger results even excluding major promotional increases and other marketing initiatives. Creating better functioning e-commerce portals didn't make the DFH a top functional medicinal brand, but it did lead to greater discovery and increasing market share domestically & globally.
Wrap-Up
Visual design, while important, took a back seat to the structural need to meaningfully improve the user experience, as most measurable gains came from refining functionality rather than aesthetics alone. As a rapidly expanding business with consistent year-over-year revenue growth, establishing a sustainable foundation for scaling e-commerce operations was critical. The primary tools used included Microsoft Clarity for user tracking, Google Analytics for performance insights, Figma for UX and interface design, HubSpot CRM and CMS for content and campaign management, and Adobe Creative Suite for production. This was a multi-department, multi-team effort with co-leads on digital refinement, myself being one.