Boosting Engagement in The Knot’s Wedding Dress Galleries

The problem

Traffic and engagement in The Knot’s Fashion Galleries had been steadily declining over the past five years. Despite high-quality content and strong brand recognition, users weren’t taking meaningful action within the galleries.
Many brides are now turning to platforms like TikTok and Instagram for dress inspiration—channels that offer visual variety but lack the context and tools tailored to wedding planning. Unlike these platforms, The Knot has the potential to offer not just inspiration, but actionable, wedding-specific guidance.

The goal

Our goal was to re-establish The Knot as the go-to destination for wedding fashion by bridging the gap between inspiration and action—connecting dresses to broader planning moments and helping users move seamlessly from discovering styles they love to taking the next step, like saving favorites, finding similar options, or booking a salon appointment.

Discovery & Research

To deeply understand our users, I led a multi-method research process:

• Conducted unmoderated interviews with users to map common UX frustrations.
• Co-led moderated sessions with bridal salon consultants and fashion strategists, identifying where online experiences failed to mirror in-salon personalization.
• We also embedded specific questions in our 2024 Annual Fashion Survey, which helped getting more quantitative signals of the user’s problems.

The user's problems

User interviews revealed two recurring pain points:

• Choice Overload: Many users felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of dress options and lacked a clear starting point, leading to decision fatigue.
• Disconnect Between Online Inspiration and In-Person Try-On: Brides struggled to translate their online favorites into real-world options, often resulting in disappointment during try-ons due to fit issues or mismatches with their body type.

To address these two challenges effectively, we chose to tackle them separately. We prioritized solving the first issue—choice overload—as it presented a more immediate opportunity to build and test a solution quickly. This allowed us to deliver value faster, validate our direction with users, and set the stage for future iterations focused on bridging the gap between inspiration and the try-on experience.

Cross-Team Collaboration at Our Barcelona Offsite

During our annual offsite in Barcelona, we hosted an in-person brainstorming session to align the full team—product, design, engineering, and data—around the upcoming fashion experience redesign.

This face-to-face collaboration created early momentum and brought several key advantages:

• Early alignment with engineers and data scientists, helping them build empathy for real user pain points uncovered in research.
• A shared understanding of project goals, user needs, constraints, and success metrics.
• Faster execution post-offsite, thanks to early feasibility discussions and risk identification.
• A strong sense of cross-functional ownership and long-term commitment from day one.

The Strategy: Personalization at the Core

To address the choice overload we decided to build a Fashion Quiz that would guide users to a curated selection of dresses based on their preferences. Our goals were to:

• Simplify the overwhelming experience of browsing hundreds of dresses
• Build user confidence through personalization
• Drive deeper engagement with relevant content

We chose this solution because it was:

• A low-lift MVP with fast time-to-value
• A familiar and engaging format for our audience
• Easy to test, measure, and iterate using direct user feedback

Working closely with the data team, we defined early signal metrics and user cohorts to track performance, test hypotheses, and optimize iteratively.

Mapping the Product

Before jumping into solutions, I created a comprehensive user flow map of the entire Fashion Galleries experience. This exercise helped us visualize the full journey—from entry points to engagement behaviors and conversion opportunities.
The user flow chart served multiple strategic purposes:

• Uncovered data and tech dependencies across entry points, filters, PDPs, favoriting, and lead generation
• Surfaced untapped opportunities for personalization, re-engagement, and cross-sell features
• Mapped monetization touchpoints, including ad placements, lead form submissions, and designer/salon site referrals

This artifact became a shared reference across product, engineering, and marketing, ensuring alignment and helping prioritize next steps based on user value and business potential.

Designing the Fashion Quiz

The design process included:

• Mapping quiz flows, interaction logic, and tone of voice (in collaboration with the UX-Writing team).
• Defining dress style taxonomies and logic in collaboration with fashion strategists.
• Creating an image system that would match quiz outcomes to aspirational, inclusive visuals.

⚠️ One unexpected challenge arose mid-design: planned use of stock images was blocked by Legal. The quiz qualified as a commercial product, and most stock photos were licensed for editorial use only.

How I solved it:

• I pivoted to AI-generated imagery, producing over 3,000 result images.
• Partnered with the fashion and marketing teams for a thorough QA process:
  • Ensured each image matched the dress properties it represented
  • Reviewed for body type, skin tone, and ethnic diversity
  • Aligned with brand tone and audience expectations

This pivot not only solved the legal issue, but gave us ownership of scalable, customizable assets for future use.

Outcomes & Impact

Engagement Metrics:

• Quiz Start Rate: ~13% of users who saw the entry point clicked to start
• Completion Rate: ~75% of users who started the quiz completed it
• Median Time to Completion: 3 minutes

Quiz completers vs. non-completers:

• 2.5× more product impressions
• 3× more dresses saved as favorite
• 3x more clicks to the dress PPD
• 2× more likely to convert into a Bridal Salon lead or Designer site visit

Site-wide impact:

• Product Impressions: +3%
• Dress Favoriting: +38%
• Signups from Favoriting: +58%
• Designer Site Click-Through: +8.4%
• Bridal Salon Leads: No significant change (flow unchanged at this stage)

These results validated our hypothesis: users needed a clear starting point. The quiz not only boosted immediate engagement, but positioned us to drive deeper personalization long-term.

What’s Next

We’ve laid the groundwork — now we’re building on it.

• Increase Quiz Start Rate: by expanding visibility and access to the quiz through more strategic entry points across high-traffic pages (e.g., gallery landing pages, dress PDPs, and onboarding moments), we aim to drive greater engagement and reach a broader audience earlier in their journey.
• Drive More Salon Leads: to close the loop between inspiration and action, we plan to connect quiz results to bridal salon inventory — allowing users to see which nearby salons carry their favorite dresses and easily book an appointment to try them on. This approach creates meaningful value for users, while driving key business metrics like engagement, conversions, and lead generation.

My Role & Impact

As the Senior Product Designer, I owned the full experience — from strategy to pixel-perfect delivery by:

• Leading end-to-end UX and visual design
• Facilitating cross-functional discovery
• Solving real-world constraints (e.g., image licensing) with creativity and speed
• Helping shape early measurement strategy with the data team
• Coordinating closely with stakeholders across:
  • Product and the Ad department (to ensure business alignment)
  • Editorial & Marketing (to align on messaging and asset reuse)
  • Traffickers (whose support was critical for the 2025 CMS upgrades)
  • C-level stakeholders including our CPO and CTO, who reviewed key milestones

This case study reflects my strength in navigating ambiguity, aligning teams, and delivering fast, user-driven solutions that also scale for the business.