Van Cleef & Arpels
Designing desire before the decision · AVA Digital Awards Platinum
timeframe
6 months
tools
Brand experience platform ans score
category
Strategic Design · Brand Experience
View it Live
Van Cleef & Arpels knew its clients loved the Maison. It didn't know why, not precisely enough to act on it. And in a world where luxury houses were beginning to compete on digital experience as much as on product, "our clients are loyal" wasn't a strategy.
The brief covered five strategic markets: France, China, Japan, UAE, and the United States. What the Maison really needed to understand wasn't purchasing behaviour. It was what happened in the space between desire and decision, and why, for some clients, that space closed in boutique but never online.
A research-first engagement. No wireframes, no UI. The work of understanding, which is the part of design most agencies skip because it's slow, expensive, and produces no artefacts a client can screenshot.
The output was a Brand Experience Platform: a strategic framework that gave the Maison a shared language for talking about experience across all touchpoints, all teams, and all markets. AVA Digital Awards — Platinum, Digital Marketing.
5
markets
3 continents
4
buyer profiles
defined & deployed
4
BXP elements framework
AVA
Digital Awards · Platinum
How
The right research question
The most common mistake in luxury UX research is asking the wrong question.
"How do users navigate the site?" is a product question. "What does a Van Cleef & Arpels client expect when they arrive online, and does anything they find there match that expectation?" is a brand question.
The difference determines everything that follows: the methodology, the findings, and ultimately what you design.
The research methodology was deliberately layered. Sector benchmarking and competitive analysis established the baseline. Mystery shopping revealed the gap between what the Maison believed the in-store experience delivered and what clients actually encountered. Client interviews and sales team conversations mapped the emotional arc of a purchase: what created desire, what created doubt, what converted, and what didn't.
The finding that restructured everything: the Maison's online and in-store experiences were speaking two completely different emotional languages to the same client. Not a communication problem. A coherence problem.
Four buyers, not one
Segmentation in luxury is almost always demographic. Age, geography, spend level. It's the wrong axis.
What the research revealed was that Van Cleef & Arpels clients didn't cluster by who they were, they clustered by how they decided.
Four distinct buyer profiles emerged from the analysis: clients who visit boutiques to buy for themselves; clients who buy online; travellers who purchase as ritual, for whom the boutique is part of the memory; and gift buyers. Each profile shared high expectations around quality, design and uniqueness, but had fundamentally different relationships with desire, trust, and conversion.
Designing a single experience optimised for one profile was guaranteed to fail the others. The Brand Experience Platform gave the Maison a framework to hold all four simultaneously, structuring four elements: the experience contract, the expected XP, the projected XP, and the lived XP. Together, they defined the brand and its relationship with each type of client.
What research really produces
The most valuable thing research does isn't produce insights. It produces permission.
Permission to make design decisions that contradict what the client assumed they knew. In this project, the research revealed that the Maison's experience was treating all clients as if they were the same type of buyer, which meant it was perfectly designed for no one.
The BXP was deployed across social media recommendations, website optimisation and in-store experience. The results went further: we were invited to global seminars and conferences to spread the user-centricity mindset and the main learnings across markets. That's the signal that the work landed. Not just a deliverable, but a new way of thinking about experience that the Maison adopted as its own.
Van Cleef & Arpels
Designing desire before the decision · AVA Digital Awards Platinum
timeframe
6 months
tools
Brand experience platform ans score
category
Strategic Design · Brand Experience
View it Live
Van Cleef & Arpels knew its clients loved the Maison. It didn't know why, not precisely enough to act on it. And in a world where luxury houses were beginning to compete on digital experience as much as on product, "our clients are loyal" wasn't a strategy.
The brief covered five strategic markets: France, China, Japan, UAE, and the United States. What the Maison really needed to understand wasn't purchasing behaviour. It was what happened in the space between desire and decision, and why, for some clients, that space closed in boutique but never online.
A research-first engagement. No wireframes, no UI. The work of understanding, which is the part of design most agencies skip because it's slow, expensive, and produces no artefacts a client can screenshot.
The output was a Brand Experience Platform: a strategic framework that gave the Maison a shared language for talking about experience across all touchpoints, all teams, and all markets. AVA Digital Awards — Platinum, Digital Marketing.
5
markets
3 continents
4
buyer profiles
defined & deployed
4
BXP elements framework
AVA
Digital Awards · Platinum
How
The right research question
The most common mistake in luxury UX research is asking the wrong question.
"How do users navigate the site?" is a product question. "What does a Van Cleef & Arpels client expect when they arrive online, and does anything they find there match that expectation?" is a brand question.
The difference determines everything that follows: the methodology, the findings, and ultimately what you design.
The research methodology was deliberately layered. Sector benchmarking and competitive analysis established the baseline. Mystery shopping revealed the gap between what the Maison believed the in-store experience delivered and what clients actually encountered. Client interviews and sales team conversations mapped the emotional arc of a purchase: what created desire, what created doubt, what converted, and what didn't.
The finding that restructured everything: the Maison's online and in-store experiences were speaking two completely different emotional languages to the same client. Not a communication problem. A coherence problem.
Four buyers, not one
Segmentation in luxury is almost always demographic. Age, geography, spend level. It's the wrong axis.
What the research revealed was that Van Cleef & Arpels clients didn't cluster by who they were, they clustered by how they decided.
Four distinct buyer profiles emerged from the analysis: clients who visit boutiques to buy for themselves; clients who buy online; travellers who purchase as ritual, for whom the boutique is part of the memory; and gift buyers. Each profile shared high expectations around quality, design and uniqueness, but had fundamentally different relationships with desire, trust, and conversion.
Designing a single experience optimised for one profile was guaranteed to fail the others. The Brand Experience Platform gave the Maison a framework to hold all four simultaneously, structuring four elements: the experience contract, the expected XP, the projected XP, and the lived XP. Together, they defined the brand and its relationship with each type of client.
What research really produces
The most valuable thing research does isn't produce insights. It produces permission.
Permission to make design decisions that contradict what the client assumed they knew. In this project, the research revealed that the Maison's experience was treating all clients as if they were the same type of buyer, which meant it was perfectly designed for no one.
The BXP was deployed across social media recommendations, website optimisation and in-store experience. The results went further: we were invited to global seminars and conferences to spread the user-centricity mindset and the main learnings across markets. That's the signal that the work landed. Not just a deliverable, but a new way of thinking about experience that the Maison adopted as its own.
Van Cleef & Arpels
Designing desire before the decision · AVA Digital Awards Platinum
timeframe
6 months
tools
Brand experience platform ans score
category
Strategic Design · Brand Experience
View it Live
Van Cleef & Arpels knew its clients loved the Maison. It didn't know why, not precisely enough to act on it. And in a world where luxury houses were beginning to compete on digital experience as much as on product, "our clients are loyal" wasn't a strategy.
The brief covered five strategic markets: France, China, Japan, UAE, and the United States. What the Maison really needed to understand wasn't purchasing behaviour. It was what happened in the space between desire and decision, and why, for some clients, that space closed in boutique but never online.
A research-first engagement. No wireframes, no UI. The work of understanding, which is the part of design most agencies skip because it's slow, expensive, and produces no artefacts a client can screenshot.
The output was a Brand Experience Platform: a strategic framework that gave the Maison a shared language for talking about experience across all touchpoints, all teams, and all markets. AVA Digital Awards — Platinum, Digital Marketing.
5
markets
3 continents
4
buyer profiles
defined & deployed
4
BXP elements framework
AVA
Digital Awards · Platinum
How
The right research question
The most common mistake in luxury UX research is asking the wrong question.
"How do users navigate the site?" is a product question. "What does a Van Cleef & Arpels client expect when they arrive online, and does anything they find there match that expectation?" is a brand question.
The difference determines everything that follows: the methodology, the findings, and ultimately what you design.
The research methodology was deliberately layered. Sector benchmarking and competitive analysis established the baseline. Mystery shopping revealed the gap between what the Maison believed the in-store experience delivered and what clients actually encountered. Client interviews and sales team conversations mapped the emotional arc of a purchase: what created desire, what created doubt, what converted, and what didn't.
The finding that restructured everything: the Maison's online and in-store experiences were speaking two completely different emotional languages to the same client. Not a communication problem. A coherence problem.
Four buyers, not one
Segmentation in luxury is almost always demographic. Age, geography, spend level. It's the wrong axis.
What the research revealed was that Van Cleef & Arpels clients didn't cluster by who they were, they clustered by how they decided.
Four distinct buyer profiles emerged from the analysis: clients who visit boutiques to buy for themselves; clients who buy online; travellers who purchase as ritual, for whom the boutique is part of the memory; and gift buyers. Each profile shared high expectations around quality, design and uniqueness, but had fundamentally different relationships with desire, trust, and conversion.
Designing a single experience optimised for one profile was guaranteed to fail the others. The Brand Experience Platform gave the Maison a framework to hold all four simultaneously, structuring four elements: the experience contract, the expected XP, the projected XP, and the lived XP. Together, they defined the brand and its relationship with each type of client.
What research really produces
The most valuable thing research does isn't produce insights. It produces permission.
Permission to make design decisions that contradict what the client assumed they knew. In this project, the research revealed that the Maison's experience was treating all clients as if they were the same type of buyer, which meant it was perfectly designed for no one.
The BXP was deployed across social media recommendations, website optimisation and in-store experience. The results went further: we were invited to global seminars and conferences to spread the user-centricity mindset and the main learnings across markets. That's the signal that the work landed. Not just a deliverable, but a new way of thinking about experience that the Maison adopted as its own.