I led brand strategy, business design, and creative direction for the direct to consumer fragrance brand PHLUR. My small team was responsible for every moment along the digital and physical customer journey. Our UX decisions were rooted in extensive industry and user research with ongoing iterative experience optimization and strategic product extensions.

When starting this project, we were faced with a question: how to sell people something as personal as fragrance online? At the time, other brands in the space were listing scent notes paired with a fragrance bottle or offering customers Buzzfeed-esque ‘scent quiz’. Neither approach felt right for the brand and neither provided customers with enough to make a decision.

After interviewing renown fragrance experts, psychologists, and even a fragrance psychology expert (what a resource!) a clear insight emerged: the perception of scent is closely tied to context. A person’s perception of scent is so dependent on context that a single smell can be loved in one context and repulsed in another.

In order to provide customers a context for each fragrance we designed each product detail page as visual narratives, inspired directly by the original mood boards briefs our perfumers were provided as they formulated the fragrances. Our hypothesis was that if a person connects with the imagery, text, and sound on the product page they are more likely to enjoy the scent.