DFYNE · Feature case study

Athlete styles

The brand's whole positioning is community. Every channel worked that way except the website, which read as though the social account belonged to a different company.

4M+
Monthly sessions across DFYNE storefronts
0
% of product views concentrated on Impact alone
0
Athlete per post — a rule the interface should have owned
Role
Product / UX designer — first member of the digital team
Team
Social media, marketing, Shopify developers
Platform
Shopify — homepage, fit sheet and PDP
01 — The gap
The athletes were already doing the persuading on social. The website gave a customer no way to act on it.

There was no route to shop what a specific athlete was wearing, and the same few athletes surfaced regardless of who was doing the selling.

Product attention was heavily concentrated: 48% of product views went to Impact alone.

The competitive review found the same failure in nearly every shop-the-look pattern — they force the whole outfit, which collapses the moment stock or sizing differs across items.

02 — Homepage

Athletes get a place on the front door.

Athlete Styles / Shop the Look sits on the homepage as a carousel of real athlete footage — gym video rather than studio photography, each clip credited to the athlete's own Instagram handle, each with a Shop the Fit control on it.

The roster is mixed rather than a single demographic: womens and mens athletes run side by side, so the surface is the community rather than one audience segment.

Homepage
03 — Shop the fit

Buy the fit, or any part of it.

Most shop-the-look patterns make you take the whole outfit. That breaks the moment one item is out of stock, or you are a different size on top and bottom.

Sized per item

Every garment gets its own price, rating and size row. XXS on the bra, XS on the jogger. The thumbnail strip doubles as progress — once an item is sized and added it carries a tick with the chosen size.

Never a dead end

See full product lands on the whole page — every colourway, the fit guidance, the reviews. It keeps the context too: a Shop Dynamic bar and a wearing S badge on the athlete's own image.

When a garment needs more than a size

The Impact Flares come in Regular and Long, so the sheet has to ask twice without turning into a form. The choice is stated back as Regular · L, and only then does the button become Add to cart with the price on it.

04 — The calls

Put the athletes on the homepage, not behind navigation

Instead of

A dedicated shop-the-look page, or an embedded social feed, reached from the menu.

Why

The relationship with an athlete already runs both ways in every other channel. Putting real athlete fits at the front door made the community the first thing a customer meets rather than something filed behind a menu — and gave merchandising a route to product a customer would never reach by sifting the catalogue.

Cost

Homepage space is the most contested real estate in the business. The feature has to keep earning its slot against campaign priorities, which means watching its performance rather than assuming it.

Athlete credit stays on the page

Instead of

Running the footage unattributed, keeping the homepage entirely self-contained.

Why

Leadership was clear the homepage should not send traffic off-site, so outbound links were out of scope. I made the case for keeping the handles: visible attribution is what makes the surface read as community rather than advertising. The handles stayed.

Cost

Attribution without a link gives the athlete exposure but not traffic — a weaker incentive to keep supplying strong content. Worth revisiting once the feature has a performance record to argue from.

Sell the fit, or any single piece of it

Instead of

The forced bundle — add the whole outfit as one unit, which is what almost every shop-the-look pattern I audited does.

Why

A bundle collapses the moment reality intervenes. Selling each garment independently, sized on its own, means the fit still works as a suggestion when the customer only wants the leggings.

Cost

More taps than a single add-everything button, and it gives up the neat merchandising story of the outfit as one purchase.

One athlete per post

Instead of

Grouping several athletes or looks into a single homepage post.

Why

The sheet has one job: make it obvious what the customer is looking at and what they can buy from it. Two athletes in a post means two wardrobes in one list.

Cost

The rule lived in the curation guidelines rather than in the build. Combined posts have appeared since launch — the lesson being that a constraint the interface depends on is safer enforced by the interface.

05 — What changed, and what I'd do differently
Before
  • Athlete content lived on social, with no route from a look to the products in it
  • Shop-the-look patterns elsewhere force the whole outfit, sized as one
  • The same few athletes surfaced on site regardless of who was selling
  • 48% of product views concentrated on a single range
After
  • Athlete footage on the homepage with Shop the Fit on every clip
  • Every garment sized and bought independently, thumbnails ticking off as you go
  • See full product keeps the PDP one tap away, carrying the athlete's own size across
  • Curated fits put ranges in front of customers who would not have gone looking
Honestly

The social and marketing teams would own the content day to day and had no framework for deciding what belonged on a homepage. I wrote that framework with them — what makes a post simple, current and shoppable. I handed the surface over at launch, and curation has drifted since. A fair reminder that the rules an interface relies on are safer built into it than written alongside it.

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