Selfridges is helping its customers make more sustainable choices with its eco-friendly fashion edit: "Buying Better", which contains more than 3,000 products from brands across fashion, homewares and beauty. This initiated based on research which identified that almost three-quarters of consumers think retailers could do more to educate them on making more sustainable choices.

My role in the sustainability project was to understand, explore and define how we talk to our customers about buying better online, including mapping out the entire user journey and leading the online delivery. The categories included: Responsible Leather, Reducing Waste, Vegan, Forest Friendly, Supporting Communities and Cruelty Free.

We worked with an external agency: A Birds Eye View who helped with the initial customer research and interviews which enabled us to define an online strategy. We took this away and mapped out the different key user journeys where we could inspire the customer throughout their online purchase. It was clear that customers would not actively search the site for sustainable products and we would have to engage the customer whilst they were shopping on the site.

We used labelling to call out the different areas in which Selfridges was being sustainable, and used information franchising to give each icon a purpose so that we could then talk more about this on the product description pages.

There was another element to this project which was "Bright new things" an initiative that champions designers who place sustainable innovation at the heart of what they do. These brands also needed to sit within the umbrella of sustainability but the business also required a way to talk about these brands separately in a launch. This was challenging but we put the designers at the fore front of the campaign and included snippets and info on product listing pages and product description pages, both giving them a visual identity but still fitting within the sustainability campaign eco-system.