The White Company + UserTesting

The team already drew on several valuable sources—digital analytics, customer-service feedback, surveys, store colleagues and larger research initiatives—but each covered only part of the picture, and few were suited to detailed design questions at short notice.

• Analytics showed where customers dropped out or behaved differently, but rarely explained why.
• Larger research projects delivered depth, but needed more time and coordination.
• Informal, internal feedback was fast, but often inconsistent or too close to the business.

UserTesting helped close that gap: recruiting participants, running a study and identifying early patterns can now happen within hours, letting research sit inside an active design cycle rather than as a separate phase after decisions are already made.

The platform allowed the team to conduct research at a meaningful scale: for example, they completed 48 sessions for their bed-linen art-direction study, while many of the stand-alone focused prototype studies used approximately 16 participants. This empowers them with enough evidence to identify repeated patterns across audiences, devices and design variants while still working at product-development speed.

A major redesign of the site navigation involved significant changes to information architecture and menu interaction, including progressive disclosure on desktop and a revised mobile UI. Because navigation is so fundamental to the shopping experience, internal discussion alone wasn't enough.

UserTesting was used to compare the current and proposed experiences, assess whether customers could find key categories, and test specific interaction choices such as hover versus click. The research showed where simplification improved the experience - and where hiding too much information introduced hesitation or reduced visibility. Rather than one all-or-nothing decision, the redesign was refined into a series of evidence-led choices, with clear hypotheses defined for follow-up A/B testing.

Analytics ran in parallel with the qualitative research rather than after it, helping the team identify pain points in the existing menu and build the case for the project's value—for instance, flagging that customers who engaged with the mega menu behaved differently in ways worth investigating further. UserTesting insights then showed the team how to redesign that journey without sacrificing clarity or customer confidence.

Across a 48-session bed-linen photography study, a proposed new direction proved stronger at showcasing collections and providing room context, while the existing photography remained more strongly associated with simplicity, premium quality and The White Company brand. Rather than replacing the existing direction outright, the findings pointed the team towards a more balanced approach—a reminder that a design can be functionally clear but still feel wrong for the brand.

That distinction matters because analytics alone can't explain it. Analytics might show that a customer didn't select a product option or left a page; UserTesting reveals whether they didn't understand a label, missed an interaction, wanted more information—or simply weren't ready to decide. It also exposes gaps between stated preference and what people can actually use successfully—helping the team move beyond opinion to cause, and to weigh trade-offs (easier to browse vs. less inspiring; more premium vs. slower to shop) consciously rather than by default.

Sharing customer clips from UserTesting and recurring themes throughout a project—not just in a final report—has helped extend customer-centred thinking beyond the research team itself, Stuart Wilkinson said. Looking ahead, The White Company plans to move towards a more continuous and connected research model, systematically connecting qualitative insight with analytics, experimentation and feedback from other channels—while broadening participation across teams and building a searchable body of insight so projects don't start from scratch.