Follett

The Collegiate Omni-Commerce Platform

OVERVIEW:

The Digital Campus Evolution

Follett is the leading provider of education technology and collegiate retail, powering over 1,200 physical and online campus stores across North America.

In partnership with IBM iX and Sogeti, the mission was to engineer a sophisticated, "evolved shell" for their responsive e-commerce engine. This wasn't just a redesign; it was the creation of a universal template designed to serve a diverse consumer base—from students and faculty to alumni and fans—while providing a seamless shopping experience for everything from course materials to officially licensed athletic gear.

ROLES:

Senior Art Direction
Lead UX/UI Design
Design System Architecture
Content & Brand Strategy

INSIGHT:

Fragmentation in Higher Ed

The collegiate retail landscape is notoriously complex. Each university has a fiercely protected brand identity, yet they all required the same robust e-commerce logic.

The legacy system suffered from "The Multi-Tenant Gap"—the inability to provide a high-performance, standardized user experience that still felt "local" to each school. To solve this, we needed to move away from bespoke sites and toward a Centralized Platform Shell that balanced technical rigidity with visual flexibility.

STRATEGY:

The Scalable Shell Framework

We developed a "Core UI Architecture" that standardized the high-friction areas of the site (Search, Course Material Selection, and Checkout) while allowing for brand-specific expression.

  • The Universal Baseline: We selected the Montserrat font family for its modern, geometric clarity and its high degree of legibility across all digital touchpoints, providing a neutral yet premium foundation..

  • Adaptive Brand Skinning: WWe engineered a primary/secondary color-injection system. This allowed each university to instantly skin the storefront with their specific colors, ensuring the platform felt like an organic extension of the campus brand.

  • Modular Page Templates: I led the UI design of a scalable "Shell" that accommodated a massive product taxonomy—ranging from high-density textbook data to lifestyle-driven apparel and spirit-wear galleries.

OBJECTIVE:

Global Standardization, Local Feeling

The goal was to deliver a unified, responsive platform that optimized the complex "Course Material Search" engine and the checkout flow, ensuring a consistent, high-conversion experience for Men’s, Women’s, and Kid’s categories across every partner institution.

RESULTS:

Enterprise Impact

  • Market Positioning: Follett’s digital transformation efforts saw them jump nearly 30 spots on the Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000 report, moving from #81 to #57.

  • Conversion & Revenue: Following the rollout of the responsive enhancements, Follett reported a 40% increase in online conversion rates and an average order value increase to $130—outperforming industry averages by nearly 30%.

  • Unprecedented Scale: The framework successfully managed a network of over 1,100 unique campus websites, supporting an annual revenue stream exceeding $3.4 Billion during the height of the digital pivot.

  • Operational Stability: By consolidating into a singular, evolved shell, Follett achieved a stable environment capable of handling the massive traffic surges inherent to "Back-to-School" seasons.

Work Dashboard: