Transforming mattress discovery into a personalized, mobile-first shopping experience
Ashley customers were navigating a large catalog of mattresses and sleep products with limited guidance on what best matched their needs.
l led the UX strategy and redesign of Ashley's Sleep Shop and Mattress Quiz, helping customers find the right mattress and build a complete sleep system with confidence.
Project Overview
- ROLE: Senior UX Architect · UX Lead
- TEAM: Product Manager, UX and UI Designers, Developers, Analytics Partners, and Business Stakeholders
- SCOPE: UX strategy, research synthesis, journey architecture, information architecture, interaction design, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing, responsive design, design direction, and stakeholder alignment
Impact
- +4.63% conversion rate
- Increased average order value
- Simplified mattress discovery and product selection
- Improved visibility of complementary sleep products
- Established reusable, mobile-first UX patterns
THE PROBLEM
Mattress shopping requires customers to compare unfamiliar attributes such as comfort level, construction, size, temperature preference, support needs, and price.
The existing experience exposed customers to products before helping them understand what they needed. Information was fragmented across categories, the Mattress Quiz lacked essential functionality, and the journey offered limited guidance for narrowing a large assortment.
This created additional effort for customers—particularly on mobile—and made it harder for the business to connect shoppers with suitable products and complete sleep solutions.
Product-first navigation – Fragmented information – Limited guidance
EVIDENCE THAT CHANGED THE DIRECTION
A three-week research sprint included more than 10 user interviews, competitive analysis, journey evaluation, and stakeholder collaboration.
The research revealed four important findings:
+10 User Interviews
Shoppers felt unsure what mattress features mattered most to their needs.
Competitive Analysis
Top e-commerce and mattress brands led with guidance and personalization.
63%+ mobile usage
Customers were shopping on mobile, but the experience was not designed for it.
Guidance over Choice
Customers wanted personalized recommendations, not more options.
Customers did not know what they needed
Mattress terminology and unfamiliar attributes made comparison difficult.
Comparison created cognitive overload
Comfort, size, temperature, support, and price were distributed across disconnected parts of the experience.
Mobile required greater focus
More than 63% of customers shopped on mobile, but the journey was not designed around mobile decision-making.
Customers wanted guidance
Shoppers needed relevant recommendations, not another broad product list.
Shifting from navigation to decision-making
The opportunity was not simply to improve product navigation. It was to help customers make a complex decision with confidence. I reframed the experience around customer needs rather than internal product categories.
The goal was not to help users browse better but to help them decide faster and with greater confidence.
DECISION ARCHITECTURE
I connected customer inputs, product data, and recommendation logic into one guided decision system.
PROGRESSIVE DECISION FLOW
The new experience connected three layers of the decision-making process:
EXPERIENCE INTENT
The experience was designed to help customers feel:
- Guided, not directed
- Informed, not overwhelmed
- Confident, not uncertain
- Supported across desktop and mobile
Every interaction needed to reduce uncertainty, clarify the next decision, and maintain a visible connection between the customer’s preferences and the products being recommended.
DESIGNING A RESPONSIVE SHOPPING SYSTEM
Because mobile represented the majority of customer traffic, the experience was designed using a mobile-first approach.
I worked with design and development teams to establish shared grid, breakpoint, component, and handoff standards.
This created a more consistent experience for customers while giving product and development teams a scalable foundation for future improvements.
Responsive foundation
- Shared grid and breakpoints
- Reusable components
- Consistent content hierarchy
Scalable modules
- Selectors
- Product cards
- Recommendations
- Cross-sell modules
VALIDATING THE INTERACTION MODEL
Early concepts used conventional controls and required customers to interpret several unfamiliar product attributes at once.
Testing indicated that customers responded better to visible choices, direct language, and progressive disclosure.
Based on these findings, I refined the experience to:
- Present options instead of hiding them inside controls
- Break complex decisions into smaller steps
- Keep selected criteria visible
Testing showed that visible options and progressive disclosure made comparison easier than conventional dropdown controls.
OUTCOME
The redesigned experience shifted mattress shopping from open-ended product navigation to guided decision-making.
The research revealed four important findings:
+4.63% conversion rate
Increased average order value
- Improved complementary-product discovery
- Established reusable mobile-first UX patterns
RESULTING IN:
A customer-centered experience that builds confidence, reduced friction, and drives measurable business impact.
A shift from navigating products to making decisions with confidence.