Case study for Yoto — 2026
Rebuilding the path to purchase for Yoto's biggest product moment.
Four surfaces on yotoplay.com redesigned for the 4th Gen launch — homepage, player listing, PDP and basket — with the pre-order module threaded through the last two.
Role
Product design lead across all four surfaces
Timeline
5 months · May – Sept 2026
Discipline
UX/UI · Product Design · UX Research
Tools
Figma · ABTasty · ContentSquare · Claude Design
Context
Families want to buy Yoto. The website makes it hard.
10 September 2026 was the biggest product moment Yoto has had in years — the 4th Gen Player and Mini, pre-order only at launch, and the starting gun for 76% of the D2C hardware budget landing in a single half of the year. The site was built for the existing Yoto community, not for a parent who has never heard of us. And on 10 September, four SKUs were live simultaneously — more choice than we'd ever asked a new visitor to make. The website had to answer "which one should I get?" clearly, or create decision paralysis at the worst possible moment. The problem isn't at checkout. 93% of new visitors never even reach the basket — but 83% of those who do complete their purchase. The site was failing to get people there. Every design decision in this project is aimed at that gap.
0%
of new visitors never reach the basket
0%
of new visitors are on mobile — where CVR is half of desktop
~0%
of new visitors have never heard of Yoto
0
SKUs live simultaneously from launch day
Conversion confidence
Remove friction. Put trust signals where doubt peaks. Make the path to basket obvious.
Product quality
The product needs to feel worth the price before the price appears. This matters more at 4th Gen pricing than ever.
Category introduction
Explain what Yoto is before asking anyone to buy it. We're selling a category, not just a product.
The homepage
Explain first. Sell second.
0%
of US new visitors leave the homepage without a single click — twice the UK rate. Around 184,000 people a year, in our most expensive market to reach.
Only 6–7% of new visitors on the homepage make it to a player page. The old hero showed bundles, cards and multiple competing options to people who didn't yet understand what any of it is — more choices, more confusion, more exits. The new hero leads with the family problem, not the product. Real photography of children using players with cards means someone who's never heard of Yoto can grasp the concept before reading a word. A single CTA moves the visitor forward — deliberately not "Shop Mini" or "Shop Player," because that forces a product choice on someone who doesn't yet know why they'd want either. Social proof and trusted content brand logos sit close to the hero. Only once someone has enough context to evaluate a product choice do we surface both players.
The player listing
From spec sheet to recommendation.
0K
new-user sessions exit the current Players page without reaching a PDP. Only 16.5% add anything to basket, versus 46% on the PDPs themselves.
The current page reads like a spec sheet, and the "Compare Players" link gets around 2% engagement — almost nobody finds it. Closing even half the gap between the Players page and the PDP add-to-basket rate is worth an estimated £1.9M. We reframed the page as a recommendation problem, not a comparison problem. "Two players built for family life" opens the page — a framing that works whether you've come from the homepage or landed here cold. Each player gets a single sentence explaining who it's for, alongside a photo of it being used in the right context. People can add to basket directly from this page. Key differences are visible inline, so the 98% who'd never navigate to a separate comparison page still see the answer they need.
The player pages
Two audiences, one page.
0%
of visitors who reach a PDP add it to basket — nearly 3× the rate on the current Players page. The PDP works, when they get there.
A meaningful share of PDP visitors arrive cold — direct from a Google search, a paid ad or a shared link — and have never seen a Yoto page before. The page has to serve both: give the cold visitor enough context, and close the deal for the visitor who's already decided. Above the fold now does both jobs. A short intro paragraph explains Yoto in plain terms, then moves immediately into what makes this specific player worth it. Reviews and social proof sit next to the price — where doubt tends to peak — not three scrolls down. The pre-order module is a bounded block inside the buy panel: PRE-ORDER badge, ship date and payment reassurance above the fold. A sticky reserve bar follows the visitor down the page, so the CTA is never more than a tap away.
What success looks like.
Launched 10 September 2026. These are the targets the four surfaces are being measured against — real results still coming in.
+0pp
mobile CVR from 8.7% baseline — ~£6.3M annualised
+0%
PLP-to-PDP progression rate — ~£1.9M
£0.0M
modelled pre-order revenue at launch (86K units × £88)
0.0%
email capture from 0.63% baseline — ~£1M+
0.0%
checkout completion held as a guardrail — must not regress
The number that ties it all together: every 1pp improvement on mobile CVR across 7.2M sessions is roughly 72,000 additional purchases — around £6.3M in annualised revenue. It's the lens every scope decision was made through.
All new components shipped behind feature flags, with ABTasty live from day one for post-launch iteration on hero copy, PLP scenario framing and trust signal placement.