RUX E-Commerce site concept design for a home improvement retail business in the US Challenge

Welcome to the "RUX 'E-Commerce site concept design for a home improvement retail business in the US' Challenge"! We are looking to explore innovative and fresh ideas to redesign our existing homepage with the main goal to increase sales and revenue by engaging the potential customer to order and buy products from our website. We are looking for your best (new) ideas and concepts!

The goal of this challenge is to take the provided design problem, analyze the user experience and provide design concepts and visual ideas on how the application might look and work!

We are looking for innovative, fresh design concepts, and new ways to think about the user interface in this challenge. 

What is the RUX Challenge?
The RUX (Rapid User Experience) challenge uses the same format as our famous LUX Challenge except it is not "Live" at an event. The RUX Challenge Series provides you with an opportunity to show digital leaders from some of the largest companies in the world just how good your concept and user experience (UI/UX) design skills are. 

RUX (Rapid User Experience) challenges are fast, fun, and have more chances for you to capture prize money!

Note: You do not need to have RUX challenge experience to join this challenge - Just jump in and give it a try! Make sure to follow the challenge details, the challenge forum and ask questions.
FULL DESCRIPTION & PROJECT GUIDE
The goal of this challenge is to take the provided requirements, analyze them and provide innovative, fresh, and better design concepts/user experience, visual ideas on how the application might look and work and solve the main problem!

RUX CHALLENGE TIMELINE AND ROLLING CHECKPOINT
- Submission Start: Wednesday, 24th April 2019 21.00 PM EST 
- Rolling Checkpoint Start: Friday, 26th April 2019 09.00 AM EST
- Submission End: Saturday 27th April 2019 21.00 PM EST  

We are offering 5 Prizes Placements
1) 1st Placement: $2000
2) 2nd Placement: $1500
3) 3rd Placement: $1000
4) 4th Placement: $750
5) 5th Placement: $500
Plus 8 placements for Rolling Checkpoint prizes @ $50 each!

Note: Important Rolling Checkpoint Details
- Client and PM will be available for early submissions and Rolling Feedback!
- We will answer questions and provide Rolling checkpoint Feedback as fast as possible.
- You must watch the Forum for your feedback!
* All initial qualifying checkpoint submissions will win $50 (8 Placements)

DESIGN CONSIDERATION
- Provide the Best quality Call to Action (CTA) for a customer in North America
- Easy to understand user flow
- A fresh and modern UI design
- Needs to follow the best practice for a responsive web application. Keep that in mind for your UI and layout ideas.
- This is an exploratory/concepts design challenge. We are looking for your ideas.

CHALLENGE FORUM
Please ask in challenge forum for any doubts/questions regarding challenge requirements:
https://apps.topcoder.com/forums/?module=ThreadList&forumID=672659

BACKGROUND OVERVIEW
Our company is one of the largest retail in Home Improvement in America. In this challenge, we are looking for innovative and fresh ideas from the Topcoder Community to re-design our Homepage so by the end of next year, we can increase our online sales by double.

CHALLENGE GOAL
Most of the time customer visits the website and left without buying anything. We need to revamp the homepage in such a way it should appeal to the customer and make them buy from our online website

~
SCREEN REQUIREMENTS
For this challenge, we are looking for the below pages to be designed/considered in your concepts. The screen functionality details listed below are suggested functionality for consideration. Do not allow the suggestions below to impact the creativity of design. If there is a better way to accomplish the same goal, then feel free to take creative liberties.

01) Homepage Screens
- In this RUX, You're gonna need to create the following Homepage design screen variations for Desktop (Mandatory) and Mobile (Optional) in your design submission:
- The targeted customer for this challenge will be Customer Base in North America, please make sure to give some hours to do a research/study from the internet about the status of home improvement customer base in North America, Their online shopping behavior? What makes them decide to buy products? What kind of products that they like? Etc! This research step is very crucial and you should not skip it, your design solution must be based on your research. 

- How can the homepage adapt based on the seasonality of our business?
- We cover new, existing, loyal and logged in customers. However, how does customer segmentation (e.g. DIY, DIFM, PRO) play a role in the experience? Personalized content?  
- Our existing Homepage consists of different layout section right now:
- You don't have to follow our existing content sections above, feel free to suggest how we should arrange the homepage with new layout arrangement
- Needs the best User Experience design to engage Customers to interact and buy items from our website
- How do we arrange the content on the homepage and make it appealing and suitable for the customer? New Section? etc?
- Great CTA design behavior for the target audience/customers
- How to engage different kinds of users (new customers, logged in customers, and a long time customers) to browse and find their needs in our online website?
- Showcase Promo and Discounts in a better way? 
- How to deal with product images? What is the best way to presenting the products in the homepage? How to make customers get more information and interested to buy products by seeing the images? Images changing when hover condition? Etc?
- Similar items that match with their previously purchased?
- Ability to register account easily for new potential customers? 
- Online Help Support in case they have questions about products?
- An easy way to find/read detail items on our website?
- Videos to show popular products and show how they look in the real environment?
- Interactive search features? How can we do this beyond AutoComplete and Auto-Suggestion that we already have?
- Instant/Simple checkout process?
- Chatbot help?
- Different Payment options? 
- Think of the customer's demography and what factors that able to create their interest to interact and buy products

02) Additional Screens
- We need you to provide Notes/Explanation on your design 
- If you ever need to create additional screens to have any other ideas to showcase your ideas, please feel free to create it
- Please create screen interactions and features that able to show your design concepts to the client clearly

03) Presentation Screen - 1920px x 1080px (16:9 Ratio)
- In a RUX challenge, this screen is the way to showcase your concept so keep it simple and make it look good!
- If you were walking into a meeting and needed to sell your idea - use this screen to showcase your concept

REFERENCES SITE
- Refer these websites for Home Improvement but DO NOT COPY:
DESIGN AND BRANDING GUIDELINES
- Desktop: minimum 1366px width with height adjusted accordingly (Mandatory)
- Mobile: 750px x 1334px (Optional, if you have time!)
- See our Branding Guidelines for style and colors (Provided in Forum)

MARVEL APP PROTOTYPE
- Your designs must be uploaded to MarvelApp
- Please send your marvel app request to fajar.mln@gmail.com or in the challenge forum
- You MUST include your MarvelApp URL (in your marvel app prototype, click on share and then copy the link & share it within your notes while you upload)

JUDGING CRITERIA
Your submission will be judged on the following criteria:
- Overall idea and execution of concepts
- How well does your design align with the objectives of the challenge
- Execution and thoughtfulness put into solving the problem
- The overall design and user experience
- Cleanliness of screen design and user flow

TARGET AUDIENCE
- Consumers in North America

SUBMISSION & SOURCE FILES
Preview Image
Please create your preview image as one (1) 1024x1024px JPG or PNG file in RGB color mode at 72 dpi and place a screenshot of your submission within it.

Submission File
- Submit JPG/PNG for your submission files
- Submit Marvel app Sharing Link for your design

Source Files
All original source files of the submitted design. Source files may be created in Adobe Photoshop, XD or Sketch!

FINAL FIX
This RUX might have Final Fixes!