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Mini IA Case Study
REL ACOUSTICS Website Relaunch
Standardizing navigation and information architecture across desktop, iPad, and mobile for a premium subwoofer brand's e-commerce relaunch.
UX DESIGN
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
E-COMMERCE
ROLE
UX Designer / Researcher
COMPANY
CX By Design
TIMELINE
Jan – Mar 2025
TEAM
CEO, Wholesale team (US/UK/DE), Dev Agency (Praella)
— the problem

When Every Menu Behaves Differently​

REL Acoustics sells premium subwoofers through a layered distribution network — from their wholesale team, through distributors and dealers, all the way to end customers. Their website needed to serve all of these audiences, but the existing navigation was working against them.


The site's key tools — Speaker Pairing and Room Setup — along with the global navigation were inconsistent across devices, creating friction for wholesale teams demoing products on iPads, dealers linking customers to resources, and end users trying to find the right subwoofer.


The relaunch aimed to strengthen direct-to-consumer sales without undermining the dealer/distributor network that REL depends on.

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Distributers

Dealers

End Users

— audit findings
What was actually broken

I audited the existing navigation across all breakpoints and documented four core issues creating confusion.

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— project goals
What we set out to fix

01

Validate design changes to the Speaker Pairing & Room Setup tools.

03

Create a clean content migration plan for the relaunch.

Same nav bar, four completely different patterns. Every section was its own island.

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02

Remove nav/IA inconsistencies across desktop, iPad, and mobile.

04

Establish a reliable UAT workflow with the dev agency.

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— the solution
Standardizing 'View All' Behavior

Instead of redesigning individual pages, I defined a set of IA rules that would bring consistency to the entire navigation system.

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One set of rules, applied everywhere. Every section now behaves the same way.

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— after · shipped
The navigation, live

Here's how the standardized navigation looks across all four sections after the relaunch.

SHOP

SUBWOOFER FINDER TOOLS

COMPANY

LEARN & EXPLORE

— results
Impact

50%

Surge in promotional sales within the first week

Record

Breaking stereo-pair sales from improved tool discoverability

DTC ↑

Strengthened direct-to-consumer channel without undermining dealers

5

Sections unified under one consistent nav pattern

— reflections
What I took away

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Systems over pages

Rather than fixing individual screens, defining rules for how every section should behave meant the UI fell into place naturally. One set of principles solved problems across five nav sections.

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Confidence per click

Users don't need more options — they need to feel certain about each action they take. Smart defaults and clear fallback paths keep momentum going better than extra toggles.

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Research → Rules → UAT

Going from stakeholder research directly to IA rules (not wireframes first), then straight into UAT with the dev agency, let us ship clarity in three months.

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