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VF Corporation Platform Migration

Supporting e-commerce platform migration through UX research, gap analysis, and journey documentation​​​

 

 

Project Context: VF Corporation was preparing to migrate several leading ecommerce brands from WCS to Salesforce Commerce Cloud. The existing platform limited page template flexibility, personalization, and storytelling opportunities, while performance issues created friction across the customer experience.

 

​As a UX Researcher on a 3-person research team, I helped document current-state ecommerce experiences, identify user and functionality gaps, and create a more structured research approach to support the migration across Vans, Timberland, and The North Face.​

Project Snapshot
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Role: UX Researcher

Team: 3 UX Researchers, in partnership with IX/Visual Design, Business Analysts, and Engineering

Brands: Vans, Timberland, The North Face

Platform: WCS to Salesforce Commerce Cloud

Tools: Figma/FigJam, InVision Freehand, Mural, UserTesting, Baymard, ContentSquare, Insider Intelligence, Gartner

Methods: Consumer Journey Mapping, Gap Analysis, Competitive Audit, Task Analysis, Usability Testing, Market Research, Analytics Review

Business KPIs: Revenue and engagement

Primary Deliverables: Research boards, gap analysis documentation, executive summaries, annotated recommendations, and brand-agnostic UX guidance

The Challenge

Several VF Corporation brands were operating on an older WCS ecommerce platform across North American and European regions. The platform created limitations for design, content, personalization, and performance.

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Key challenges included:

  • Limited flexibility for page templates

  • Limited personalization capabilities

  • Difficulty creating richer product storytelling experiences

  • Inconsistent experiences across brands and regions

  • Slow site performance, with some pages taking up to 40 seconds to load

  • A need to standardize ecommerce design patterns across multiple brands

  • A need to clearly communicate functionality changes to designers, business analysts, and engineers

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The migration to Salesforce Commerce Cloud created an opportunity to modernize the customer experience while simplifying the tech stack and improving frontend usability.

Project Goal

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The goal was to create a more inclusive, consistent, and consumer-friendly ecommerce experience as VF transitioned leading brands to a new platform.

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Our research team focused on creating a scalable approach that could support multiple brands while still allowing each brand to apply its own visual identity later in the design process.

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We approached the migration by prioritizing:

  • Brand-agnostic UX research

  • Low-fidelity design exploration

  • Ecommerce best practices

  • Current-state documentation

  • Regional comparison across North America and EMEA

  • Gap analysis between existing and future-state experiences

  • Clear research handoff to IX/Visual Design, Business Analysts, and Engineering

Overview of timeline and descriptions of process

My Role
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As a UX Researcher, I supported the research process across discovery, documentation, synthesis, and recommendation development.

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My responsibilities included:

  • Auditing current e-commerce experiences across Vans, Timberland, and The North Face

  • Comparing North American and EMEA site experiences across desktop and mobile

  • Documenting current-state page structures, user flows, site elements, and analytics

  • Identifying friction points across the consumer journey

  • Conducting gap analysis across existing and proposed functionality

  • Reviewing e-commerce best practices through market and competitive research

  • Creating research boards organized by site segment

  • Synthesizing findings into executive summaries

  • Collaborating with IX/Visual Design to prioritize recommendations

  • Supporting documentation that helped Business Analysts and Engineers understand what was changing in the migration

Research Approach

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Because the migration involved multiple brands, regions, and site experiences, our team needed a research process that could scale.

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We divided the e-commerce experience into key site segments so each researcher could focus deeply on a specific part of the consumer journey. This allowed us to compare patterns across brands and regions while still documenting enough detail for design and engineering handoff.

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Examples of segments included global elements such as:

  • Header

  • Primary navigation

  • Utility navigation

  • Footer

  • Product discovery flows

  • Product detail experiences

  • Checkout-related interactions

  • Content and storytelling areas

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For each segment, we reviewed current-state experiences, gathered analytics, compared desktop and mobile behavior, and identified where brand and regional differences created inconsistency or friction.

Example of research board divided by segment

Current-State Documentation
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We began by collecting and documenting production examples from each brand site.

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This included:

  • Screenshots of current page templates

  • Desktop and mobile views

  • Brand-specific variations

  • Regional differences between North America and EMEA

  • Existing functionality

  • Interaction patterns

  • Analytics and performance considerations

  • Known pain points across the customer journey

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This documentation helped the team understand what currently existed before defining what needed to change for the new platform.

A closer look of annotations per brand

Gap Analysis​
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A major part of the project involved comparing existing site functionality against new low-fidelity design concepts. Once the design team approved low-fidelity concepts, our research team conducted a detailed gap analysis to identify what functionality would remain the same, what would be modified, and what would need to be newly built.​

 

We categorized changes into four buckets:

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​Gap — Net New

New functionality that did not exist across the current brand sites.​

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Partial Gap — Semi Net New

Functionality that existed for one or two brands, but not consistently across all brands.​

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Fit+ — Modified Existing Functionality

Functionality that existed in the current platform but required updates for the new 1.5 experience.​

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Fit — Existing Functionality

Functionality that remained the same and did not require new design or development changes.​

 

This structure helped Business Analysts and Engineers quickly understand the level of change required for each experience and prioritize work more effectively.

Example of standardized designs with annotations

Improving the Research System
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As the project progressed, our team realized the amount of information being collected was becoming difficult for designers and stakeholders to navigate.

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To make the research easier to understand and act on, we refined the structure of our research boards.

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We introduced a matrix for each site segment that included:

  • A snapshot of the proposed design solution

  • A description of the required functionality

  • Which brands were currently using a similar solution

  • Vendor or technical considerations

  • Gap category

  • Supporting analytics

  • Relevant market or competitive insights​

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This helped shift the research from a large collection of observations into a clearer decision-making tool.

Example of matrix for each site segment

Prioritization Framework

To support decision-making, we introduced a prioritization system that compared consumer need against development effort.

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Recommendations were categorized as:

  • Small effort: suitable for immediate inclusion

  • Medium effort: reviewed case by case with the broader design team

  • Large effort: considered for post-launch or future-state initiatives

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This framework helped the team focus on the most valuable improvements for the MVP while capturing larger opportunities for future enhancements.

Example of executive summaries and prioritization

Key Insights
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1. Standardization was necessary, but flexibility still mattered

VF needed a more consistent e-commerce foundation across brands, but each brand still needed room to express its own identity, storytelling, and product strategy.

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2. Current-state documentation reduced migration ambiguity

Documenting what existed across brands, regions, and devices helped teams understand the real scope of change before moving into design and development.

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3. Gap analysis created shared language across teams

The four-bucket system made it easier for researchers, designers, business analysts, and engineers to discuss functionality changes clearly.

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4. Research needed to be actionable, not just thorough

Large research boards were helpful, but they became more valuable when synthesized into matrices, executive summaries, and prioritized recommendations.

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5. Brand-agnostic UX patterns helped speed up migration work

By identifying common e-commerce patterns first, the team could build a stronger foundation before applying individual brand themes and visual design.

Recommendations

Based on the research, we recommended that the migration process prioritize:

  • Clearer global navigation patterns

  • More consistent e-commerce flows across brands

  • Improved template flexibility for product storytelling

  • Stronger mobile and desktop consistency

  • Brand-agnostic UX patterns before visual theming

  • Documentation that clearly separated current-state functionality from future-state functionality

  • Prioritization based on user need and development effort

  • Post-launch tracking for larger enhancements that could not fit into MVP scope

Final Deliverables
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Our team delivered:

  • Current-state research boards by site segment

  • Gap analysis documentation across brands, regions, and devices

  • Competitive and market research summaries

  • Executive summaries of UX recommendations

  • Annotated design documentation

  • Prioritization guidance for design and development teams

  • A scalable research structure that could be reused across additional site segments

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These deliverables helped create a clearer bridge between research, design, business analysis, and engineering during the platform migration.

Impact
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This project helped VF Corporation create a more structured and scalable research process for ecommerce platform migration.

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By documenting current-state experiences, identifying functionality gaps, and organizing recommendations by user need and development effort, our research team helped reduce ambiguity across cross-functional teams and supported a smoother transition toward Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

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The work contributed to a stronger foundation for more consistent, flexible, and consumer-friendly ecommerce experiences across Vans, Timberland, and The North Face.

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