Fab.com: Behind the Design of the Sleek Ecommerce Site

June 19th, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

Fab has become the darling of the Interwebs. What started as a gay social network has pivoted into a design-focused, socially charged ecommerce site that sells everything from rugs to wine glasses to decorative tchotchkes.

Fab has seen 4.75 million consumers log in since its launch in June 2011, buying 1.8 million products. Each day, there are approximately $400,000 in sales, and 50% of new referrals are from social sites, says Fab founder and CEO Jason Goldberg. According to the New York Times, the company is heading toward a $140 million annual revenue.

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In December 2011, the site raised $40 million in funding, and that money has been put to good use in Fab 3.0 — a redesign of the site that integrates Facebook. The new look also more prominently displays the live feed of “likes” and purchases, since data shows that social recommendations are a key revenue driver.

We’re guessing the company’s sleek interface also has helped to drive popularity and sales — the UI makes it easy to browse and buy, and a slew of daily sales of hot items keep people coming back for more. Mashable spoke with Goldberg about his design philosophy, the infamous pivot and the challenges of designing for ecommerce.

QA with Jason Goldberg, CEO of Fab.com

What inspired the design of the site? Did the fact that you sell design heighten the pressure?

When Bradford [Shellhammer, chief creative officer and co-founder] and I decided to do Fab, it was built out of us saying, “What is the one thing we’re both passionate about?” And it was design. We took this challenge to make a company all about design. We said that if we’re really going to be a design site, then we have to have the best website and apps, and we need to rethink the way people shop online and discover products through social commerce.

My design philosophy is that every pixel has a place — I’m very personally involved and to this day, I still look to make sure the experience really is what we want it to be. The experience that we try to focus on for our website and apps is to get out of the users’ way and focus on clean design. In a great UE, the user doesn’t even realize you’re there — it’s all about the products. The tech is doing its part when people aren’t thinking about it. It just works.

That’s our approach — do we really need that plugin? Do we really need that text? We’re about simplicity. Less is more. We definitely have a point of view on Fab — the website is as well designed as the stuff we’re selling, which is as well designed as the team behind it.

Where do you look for design inspiration?

For me, it’s stuff that I like to use and feel like it’s a good experience. Lots of people are doing great things and I think we’re also trying to figure out what’s the best thing for Fab. When people build products or services, too often it’s about them, not the user. But if the user is excited and we make them smile, then we’ll do that. And we try to stay really all about the product — the “product” is the product we sell and the product we build.

There have been a lot of people who think of design as graphic design, but there’s more — there’s interaction design, which is the interaction elements. Instagram has become Twitter for photos, and it’s figured out the best, simplest way to share photos. Path is known for this, too — how they used interaction design and pushed the boundaries of what the device can do. Similarly with Flipboard and Pulse, they use interaction design to create web apps and mobile apps that push the boundaries of what the device can do, and I think that is really interesting.

What is your design process like?

I usually play around in Balsamiq and Keynote, and I’ll draw something with pen and paper. For me, it’s about physically moving things around. I’m not a Photoshop guy — I work with Veerle [Pieters, design lead] to translate my ideas into a product.

The big challenge for me is making sure that as we grow the company and the number of people involved in projects, that things are still Fab.

Tell me about the highly social live feed on Fab, which shows every purchase and “like” in real time. What was the genesis of that feature?

We looked at it as, “How do we take the offline shopping experience and put it online?” You walk down the street in Soho or Brooklyn, and there’s that experience of going shopping with your friends and having them point things out to you. How do you take that online? We needed to reimagine it for the web, and that’s what the first iteration of our social feed is all about — how do you shop with friends and discover what they’re buying, but also what they’re liking or pinning? The feed is a great way to browse and discover, and from day one, we knew where we were going with social.

How did the pivot from Fabulis to Fab.com change your mission and your approach?

Even before we pivoted, a lot of people had thought we’d done some great things in UE and design, but we didn’t find the audience for it.

Now that we’re growing so fast, we feel like we have even bigger challenge. We have 45 million members globally, and we’re growing rapidly. We got 600,000 people in the last 30 days, and the challenge for us figuring out how to deliver an even better experience for the next five million members.

We’re growing on the product side as well — we had 2,000 unique products on the site at the end of 2011, and today we have over 10,000. So how do we develop the site in a way that’s fun to use and easier to discover great products? That intellectual design challenge thrills me and gets me very excited. Some new features on our site are enabling people to discover new products like never before.

Your site sells everything from dog treats and wall coverings to furniture and kitchenware. Who is the Fab customer?

We’re looking for design lovers everywhere, all the people who appreciate and love design. They’re 18 to 45, they are digital natives, they’re people who have experienced the web as an integral part of their life. They probably own an iPhone and also an iPad. They probably like an eclectic mix of products in their life, a mix of high-end and everyday items. We celebrate color on Fab, so we look for people who can appreciate it. The stuff that sells really well on Fab is graphic posters — people struggle to find good stuff online. And many Fab users are looking at jewelry. Then there’s furniture — everyone needs a couch, tabletop stuff, a vase, a lamp — that’s always going to sell.

Tell me about the “Inspiration Wall,” which encourages users to upload their own design inspirations.

The Inspiration Wall actually came about before we even launched our site. June 9 is the day we launched sales, but for three months before that, we were trying to build the audience and tell people what Fab is about, to get them excited. One month in, we had 50,000 users, and we were seen as the place for design. We very quickly put up the Inspiration Wall to give people something to do while they waited for the site to launch, and it’s really just taken off. We had close to 200,000 people before launch, and the Inspiration Wall is a big reason why there’s so much social integration on the site. It’s hard to make that kind of activity happen even if you try to deliver a good product, so it’s been great. It’s not forced — people love sharing design. In fact, 50% of our users come from social sharing.

Have you used Fab to find good products? What was your experience on the highly social site? Let us know in the comments.

This story originally published on Mashable here.