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New York, NY

[UI/UX]

Mela Water

Mela Water

INDUSTRY

Food & Beverage

ROLE

UI/UX Design
Conversion Rate Optimization
Design Systems

IMPACT

155% increase in peak season sales YoY.

27% boost in repeat purchase rate.

58% improvement in mobile bounce rate.

THE CONTEXT

After wrapping their Series A, Mela Water was preparing to release their plant-based hydration line on a national scale. Despite rapid retail growth, their digital experience wasn’t up to par.

The majority of Mela’s traffic on Shopify came from mobile yet the data showed that the site was a leaky bucket.

Over 45% of mobile visitors were bouncing from the site after landing, signaling foundational issues with the UX.

Accessibility was also an issue. The design system used a set of muted pastel colors as the primary palette. While this was compliant with Mela’s brand guidelines, it made color contrast as low as 1.21:1 on some surfaces and failed WCAG 2.0 compliance.

The result was a digital storefront that didn’t meet the needs of Mela’s customers and their business was leaving revenue on the table because of it.
WHAT WE DID

We redesigned Mela’s website around mobile-first principles, ensuring the experience felt usable, intuitive, and accessible on the devices customers were actually using to shop.

The product listing (PLP) and detail pages (PDPs) were overhauled to solve for CRO issues like duplicative product information, lack of doubt-breakers to encourage subscription over one-time purchase, and extra clicks in the add-to-cart flow that could be removed.

I proposed an updated brand palette to Mela and after implementation, color contrast was brought up to an average of 4.8:1, significantly increasing readability.

In order to avoid losing customers that prefer to purchase on Amazon but were browsing Mela’s website, we added Buy with Prime integration so that users could checkout with their preferred platform seamlessly.
THE IMPACT

After the transformation, the impact was immediate. Mobile bounce rates improved by 58%, showing that customers were finally able to shop quickly and complete purchases with ease.

On Black Friday, Mela’s biggest DTC shopping period of the year, the optimized experience drove a 155% increase in year-over-year sales.

Repeat purchase rates also rose 27% over the next six months post-launch, attributed to the improvements made to conversion surfaces.

Our changes turned first-time customers into loyal ones, allowing Mela to leverage its digital storefront as a springboard for national growth and ultimately achieving acquisition in 2025.

Want to get in contact? Let's talk!

© 2025 Leo Chang

New York, NY

Want to get in contact? Let's talk!

© 2025 Leo Chang

New York, NY

Want to get in contact?
Send me a message.
Let’s talk!

© 2025 Leo Chang

New York, NY