Case Study

Dardano’s
Shoes

A full e-commerce redesign that helped an 85-year-old family shoe retailer survive the pandemic — pivoting from physical retail to digital sales and generating $106K in profit within six months.

Industry E-commerce / Retail
Role Lead Product Designer
Team Sole designer + 1 engineer
Timeline 6 Months
Platforms Desktop & Mobile
Dardano's Shoes Redesign
Hear me talk about this project
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01 — Overview

Design as a Survival Strategy
for a Historic Brand

Founded in 1938, Dardano’s is a beloved family-owned shoe retailer in Denver, Colorado — known for quality footwear and a deeply personal in-store experience. When the pandemic erased their foot traffic, that reliance on physical retail became an existential risk.

I led a rapid, full-scale redesign of Dardanos.com — turning a brochure-style site that had never really sold anything into a real e-commerce business that captured the brand’s warmth online and drove measurable revenue.

~3x
Increase in online orders in the first quarter — from a near-zero baseline to a real revenue channel
$106K
In online profit within the first six months — validating the pivot from physical-first to digital-first retail
↑ Engagement
More pages per session — users explored the catalog instead of bouncing from the homepage
View Live Site ↗
E-commerce UX Research Information Architecture Conversion Optimization Brand Design Design Systems
Part of a connected system
Same owner, two storefronts. Dardano’s is where you buy your shoes — EZ Shoe Repair is where you get them fixed. I designed both ends of the journey.
→
02 — The Problem

An Outdated Site Failing
a Premium Brand

The old Dardanos.com had outdated visuals, confusing navigation, and an information architecture that buried products. Customers who loved the store in person had no equivalent online — so e-commerce sales were negligible.

When the pandemic closed the physical store, that weakness became a crisis. The site didn’t just underperform; it actively undermined a brand that deserved better — at the exact moment it was the only channel left.

I’m willing to pay more for quality and personalized service, but the website needs to make it easy to find what I want quickly — and trust that the fit will be right.

— Robert Diaz, Loyal Dardano’s Customer · User Research Interview
03 — My Role & How I Worked

What I Owned

I was the sole designer on the project, working directly with the Dardano’s owners and partnering with one engineer through the build. I owned the entire design end-to-end — user research, information architecture, visual design, and the UI system — and worked side by side with the engineer to ship it without losing fidelity.

This wasn’t a hand-off-the-mockups engagement. I set the strategy, made the hard calls, and stayed in the build until it shipped. Two of those calls shaped the entire outcome:

Decision 01
Trust before polish
You can’t try shoes on online, so I prioritized trust-builders — real reviews, honest sizing guides, a clear returns policy — over a flashier homepage. I bet that confidence, not decoration, was what converted browsers into buyers. The revenue proved the bet right.
Decision 02
A Quick-Find IA for a deep catalog
With hundreds of SKUs, findability was the whole game. Rather than polish the existing menus, I rebuilt the navigation around a Quick-Find model that cut the path to purchase from many clicks to a few — designed to work for a 28–65 age range, not just the tech-fluent.
04 — Process

From Research to Revenue

01
Discover
Interviews, Usability Tests & a Competitive Audit
Interviewed loyal customers, ran usability tests on the live site, and deployed surveys to find what was breaking. Audited leading shoe retailers to benchmark the features that actually drive conversion — reviews, filtering, fit guides.
02
Define
Rebuilding the Information Architecture
Mapped the full site and pinpointed where the IA failed users. Defined a simplified navigation model and the Quick-Find concept to collapse the path to purchase — critical for a catalog with hundreds of SKUs.
03
Design
A Premium System, Trust-First Pages
Built a visual system that matched the brand’s quality and rebuilt product pages around trust — strong imagery, embedded reviews, clear sizing, a simplified add-to-cart, and filtering to narrow a large catalog fast.
04
Validate & Ship
Testing Across a Wide Audience
Tested the new IA and filtering across the 28–65 age range, iterating until users found items in fewer clicks — then partnered closely with the engineer through the build to keep the shipped product true to the design.
05 — Impact

Design That Saved a Business

From Near-Zero to a Real Revenue Channel
Before the redesign, dardanos.com barely sold anything. Within six months it generated $106K in online profit and roughly 3x the orders — proving the brand had a digital audience waiting to be reached.
Users Explored Instead of Bouncing
Session depth rose measurably after launch. The new navigation and filtering meant customers moved through the catalog with intent, finding products they’d never have surfaced on the old site.
A Family Business Survived the Pandemic
This wasn’t just a UX win — it was the difference between a business that adapted and one that didn’t. Dardano’s came out of the pandemic with a functioning digital operation built to scale.
06 — Reflection

What This Project Taught Me

Learning 01
Design Is a Business Strategy
This wasn’t a portfolio project — it was a survival decision for a real business in a real crisis. When the stakes are that concrete, you stop optimizing for aesthetics and start optimizing for outcomes. The revenue followed the clarity.
Learning 02
Trust Is the Conversion Lever
For quality brands, people don’t buy from a site they don’t trust. Reviews, returns, sizing, page speed — every one of those decisions was really about giving a customer enough confidence to buy without touching the product.
Learning 03
I’d Instrument the Funnel From Day One
Honestly, I was reading engagement qualitatively — I could feel the site working before I could fully prove why. With hard funnel analytics in place at launch, I’d have known exactly which trust-builders drove conversion and iterated faster. On the next build, measurement goes in before launch, not after.
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© 2026 Melvin Morales Lead Product Designer · Las Vegas, NV Built with intention.