Nordstrom Media Network
Nordstrom Media Network
nordstrom media network: designing ads customers actually love.
Nordstrom Media Network (NMN) is an advertising program for brands to share their stories with Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack customers via onsite and off-site media campaigns.
As the lead Content Designer, I design high-visibility products like banner, offsite, and video ads, which brought in a total revenue of $43M earnings in 2024. This ultimately supports Nordstrom's goal to grow into a leading example in the retail media industry, growing repeat customers and business partnerships.
The challenge? To display ads at the right place at the right time in the customer journey, ensuring a non-interruptive, smooth experience that promotes Nordstrom as a fashion authority and guide, not just another advertiser.
brand discovery
The Brand Discovery project introduces placements across Nordstrom’s website to showcase top brands, addressing a key challenge for Nordstrom Media Network: high brand demand for ad placements without onsite inventory, while promoting brand discovery and elevating the shopping experience for customers.
Brand partner benefits:
Improved brand destination
Increased reach of the brand experience
Increased reach of new customers
Increased conversion on the page to new and returning customers.
Nordstrom benefits:
Increased confidence with brands that Nordstrom is the partner of choice and fashion authority.
Increased conversions on a brand’s View All products page.
Increased awareness of Nordstrom’s offerings, including Styling.
DESTINATION: BRAND PAGES
Project
Name here
Timeline
H1 2024
I designed the content strategy for brand pages to serve as a dynamic hub where brands could tell their stories and build deeper customer connections. The revamped pages not only enhanced storytelling but also drove significant improvements in Views and Conversions, setting a new standard for innovation in the retail media industry.
By optimizing information architecture and crafting compelling copy, we created an engaging experience that increased brand visibility and revenue impact.
As part of the broader Brand Discovery initiative, we designed multiple touchpoints across Nordstrom, strategically guiding customers to these pages and maximizing their exposure.
UX Content Strategy Impact
Brand Storytelling: Led content strategy for a brand tagline beneath titles, creating a clear, compelling narrative in large video banners—enhancing engagement and scannability.
"Save Brand" Feature: Designed a new save function for users to favorite Nordstrom brands, improving personalization.
Optimized Navigation: Crafted clear, intuitive category titles to reduce cognitive load and improve discoverability, ensuring users quickly find what they need.
COmpare to the previously promoted experience
Touchpoints to the brand pages
I designed the content strategy for various ingress points across Nordstrom to link to the brand pages. These touch points are critical for discovery and monetized for brand partners.
Brands We Love showcases my content design ethos of using copy to entice and connect with users. This also promotes Nordstrom’s fashion authority. I tested multiple iterations of copy and gathered feedback from UX, Product, Leadership, and Content teams for weeks on multiple variants until this copy was final.
The Discover [Brand] primary call-to-action button links directly to the enhanced brand pages, while Shop All links to all products in the brand.
I worked directly with design and marketing to promote larger brand assets and conducted UX research to A/B test the two CTAs to determine which would be primary and secondary.
Homepage
SEARCH INGRESS: TORY BURCH
Black Content Well: Multiple brands and internal teams provided feedback that the sharp contrast of the black content well was not visually appealing nor fit with the image asset.
“All Items” Navigation: UX research showed that displaying all items at once without the category navigation section led to users spending more time on the page searching for their items using the left nav bar or using the Search bar, despite already being on the brand page.
SEARCH RESULTS: VUORI BANNER
Adding Discover Tory Burch to the global navigation creates an opportunity for discovery when the user is searching. This was inspired by competitive UX research with other retail media networks. One of our design goals is to be on par with industry design trends, while maintaining our brand identity.
The brand banner shown for select brands like Vuori search results provides multiple actions to promote the brand. Users can save this brand, visit the brnad discovery page, or view all brands in the category navigation section on the next brand discovery page. I worked with marketing to ensure that brand-provided copy would be impactful in this space’s design.