Animation for Zalando App Promotion
Role: Digital Designer + copy team
Tools: After Effects, Sketch, Illustrator
Duration of project: 2 weeks, 2018
The brief was to create an animated video GIF that would promote Zalando App in the email environment by highlighting 3 key USPs, such as: (1) exclusive deals, (2)wishlist and (3)alerts. The brief implied that 15 language/market screen videos should be recorded, covering following user flow: opening an app with exclusive deals on the homepage > choosing a product and adding it to wishlist > receiving a notification.
This task lots of technical constraints: (1) the gif was supposed to have a size of around 500-700Kb, but this kind of video gif even in the lowest quality would be ten times more and it wasn’t feasible to be featured in emails; (2) prompting notification from the home screen required either a time and mere luck (by hoping that the app would generate a notification), or an additional effort from the tech team which wasn’t available and possible; 3) assets for 15 markets had to be created in local languages and with localised offers, i.e. products and prices; 4) last but not least, during recording the app tended to load differently, i.e. slow-down or freeze, and this was far from perfect from the visual perspective.
So how did I solve this problem?
I created the template that replicated this exact user flow with additional explanatory text for each step. I recreated the app loading screen in After Effects, then I created templates in Sketch for the following screens and its elements: home screen, product page with wishlist button and locked screen notification screen. I briefed the copy team to provide translation for each of the languages (English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Polish). In After Effects I animated the homepage scroll, on the product page I added pulsating animation for wishlist button to highlight it and created locked screen animation with notification.
Such template allowed to create visually consistent and appealing communication, the possibility to edit fast and quickly apply changes in any of the languages, and swiftly deliver all assets in optimal size. It was also sustainable solution as it was reused in the future with different copy and products.
Emails featuring this animation showed increased CTR performance and consequent app download.