Case Study

EZ Shoe
Repair

Turning a jargon-heavy repair service into a visual checkout, from “I have no idea what I need” to ordered in under five minutes.

Industry E-Commerce / Services
Role Lead Product Designer
Team Sole designer + 1 engineer
Timeline 5 Months
Platform Web Application
EZ Shoe Repair repair configurator
Hear me talk about this project
0:00
01: Overview

Making a Complex Service
Feel Effortless Online

EZ Shoe Repair is an online shoe repair service, a category most people still associate with dropping shoes off at a local cobbler. The challenge was getting customers to trust the process enough to order online, navigate the repair options confidently, and complete checkout without confusion.

I led the full design of their e-commerce experience, creating a clean, visual, and educational checkout flow that replaced a long, jargon-filled form with an intuitive tile-based selection system, making the service accessible to a wide range of customers regardless of tech proficiency.

↑ Orders
Meaningful increase in completed online orders after launch, the old flow was actively blocking purchases from going through
<5min
The design target: from landing to confirmed order, with no prior knowledge of shoe-repair terminology required
↑ AOV
Average order value rose as clearer service discovery led customers to add repairs they previously wouldn’t have found
View Live Site ↗
E-Commerce UX Checkout Optimization Conversion Rate UX Research A/B Testing Mobile Design
Part of a connected system
Same owner, two storefronts. EZ Shoe Repair is where you fix your shoes. Dardano’s is where you buy them. I designed both ends of the journey.
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02: Problem Statement

A Specialized Service Lost
in a Sea of Jargon

The existing online repair process was a major conversion barrier. Customers were met with outdated interfaces, lengthy text-heavy forms packed with technical terminology most people don’t know: sole replacement types, welt stitching, heel caps. The result was confusion, low trust, and abandoned orders.

The business couldn’t scale with a flow that actively pushed customers away before they could complete a purchase. The experience needed to be rebuilt from the ground up around clarity, education, and trust.

I just want the checkout to be quick and painless: no surprises, no unnecessary steps. I don’t know what half these repair options even mean.

Amelia Chen, Goal-Oriented Professional · User Research Interview
03: My Role & How I Worked

What I Owned

I led the design end-to-end, research, the checkout architecture, the visual system, and the interaction design, and partnered closely with one engineer to build it. The whole brief came down to a single problem: customers don’t speak cobbler. Sole replacement, welt stitching, heel counters: that’s industry language, not customer language.

Two decisions did the heavy lifting:

Decision 01
Show, don’t name
People couldn’t pick the right repair from text alone, so I killed the jargon form entirely and led every option with a photo, a plain-language description, and an upfront price. Customers identify what they need at a glance instead of decoding technical terms, the single change that unlocked conversion.
Decision 02
Tap, don’t type, on mobile
Every form field was a place to lose someone, and most people were ordering on their phone. So I rebuilt the flow around quick-tap selection over text entry, mobile-first, with trust signals, reviews, guarantees, turnaround times, built into the steps so confidence never required leaving the page.
EZ Shoe Repair cart with itemized repair details
04: Impact

What We Delivered

The Checkout Finally Converted
The old flow was losing customers before they got halfway through. The redesigned tile-based experience removed every unnecessary step, and for the first time, the majority of users who started the flow actually finished it.
Customers Started Adding More Services
When repair options are clearly presented with images and plain descriptions, people discover services they didn't know they needed. Average order value increased as customers added services they would have previously missed or ignored in the old form.
Non-Tech Users Could Complete Orders Unassisted
Usability testing with low-tech participants, the segment most likely to abandon, showed they could move from landing page to confirmed order without asking for help. That was the real benchmark we were designing toward.
A Scalable Foundation for Growth
The tile system was built to scale: new repair services could be added as visual tiles without rethinking the flow. The client had a platform that could grow with the business rather than needing a full rebuild every time the catalog changed.
EZ Shoe Repair homepage and repair flow
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Previous Project
Dardano's Shoes
© 2026 Melvin Morales Lead Product Designer · Las Vegas, NV Built with intention.