A high-visibility surface under pressure
The desktop homepage at iHerb is one of the most visible and scrutinized surfaces in the product. It sits at the intersection of marketing priorities, executive expectations, and long-term platform considerations.
When I stepped into this project, the request was clear but incomplete: update the homepage to better reflect the brand and support evolving business goals—quickly.
The constraint wasn’t design — it was pressure
The homepage had accumulated years of incremental changes. Different teams had touched it with good intent, but without a unifying vision. Visual inconsistency, content sprawl, and competing priorities made the experience feel fragmented.
Complicating matters, feedback was coming directly from executive leadership. The timeline was compressed, expectations were high, and alignment across teams was still forming.
This wasn’t a scenario where design could disappear into exploration. We needed to be decisive.
This moment reinforced ideas I’ve written about in Designing Under Executive Pressure.
How I navigated the work
The approach focused on creating clarity before optimization—establishing a vision that could align stakeholders before diving into implementation details.
Choosing vision before optimization
Rather than starting with incremental tweaks, I proposed a different approach: create a future-state desktop homepage that clarified where we were going before deciding how far we could realistically move in the near term.
This reframing helped shift conversations away from individual modules and toward overall structure, hierarchy, and intent.
The goal wasn’t to ship everything immediately. It was to create a north star that teams could align around.
Designing for alignment, not just approval
The design work focused on:
- Clarifying visual hierarchy across content types
- Reducing cognitive load by grouping related information
- Establishing more consistent patterns for promotions and discovery
- Making brand expression feel intentional rather than decorative
Just as important as the design itself was how it was presented. I treated reviews as alignment moments, not just checkpoints.
Navigating tradeoffs without losing trust
Not everything in the future vision could ship immediately. Technical constraints, dependencies with mobile teams, and ongoing experiments required prioritization.
Instead of defending every detail, I focused on explaining tradeoffs clearly: what mattered now, what could wait, and why.
This transparency helped maintain momentum while avoiding false expectations.
Results and reflections
Shared direction across product, design, and marketing
Reduced debate around homepage structure
Future vision unlocked phased execution
From deliverable to reference point
The future-state design became a reference point rather than a one-off deliverable. It informed subsequent iterations, helped onboard new partners, and reduced reactive redesign cycles.
More importantly, it repositioned design as a strategic contributor — not just an executor responding to feedback.
Clarity matters more than completeness
High-visibility projects often test more than design skill. They test judgment, communication, and leadership under pressure.
This project reinforced a lesson I’ve learned repeatedly: when stakes are high, clarity matters more than completeness.