Improving the customer experience by introducing more options for customers, enhancing customer and logical user flow
TYPE
Concept project
DURATION
2 week sprint
TEAM
Me, myself and I
MY ROLE
UX Designer
METHOD
Business Analysis, heuristic evaluation, competitve analysis, sketching, wireframing , prototyping and usability testing.
TOOLS
Pen & paper, Figma
Overview
Overview
“Giving customers in-store vibes on the online platform.”
Overview
The objective is to align brick n mortar experience to e-commerce while maintaining the expectations of the customers and the business.
Making customers happy is our priority by replicating award-winning in-store experience to the online platform.
The famous in-store experience fell short on the online platform
Meet the client - Abbey's Bookshop
"Abbey's is an Aladdin's cave for readers and Sydney's much-loved indie bookshop since 1968. It has been famous for its in-store experience. It has become an institution among readers and knowledge seekers looking for those hard to find books. A visit is a ‘must’ if your interests are history, science, crime fiction, or literature.
Who doesn’t like bargains - especially a busy mom of 3
Meet the archetype - Deal Diver
With the brief given to me about the archetype, it was evident that the deal diver wants to be sure of getting value for money, spoilt for options, and an uncomplicated checkout process. The icing on the cake would be the addition of free shipping or click n collect. I am sure everyone gets a little excited when they get a good deal.
The confusion started from the homepage, which wasn’t the only problem.
The problem
“Confusion started from the homepage. I was lost in this content forest; I couldn’t’ find the deal I was looking for.”
Putting myself in my archetype’s shoes, I did a thorough website analysis and found the following issues.
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Layout issues
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Redundancy
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Hidden functionality
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Search functionality issues
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Confusing navigations
Competitive and comparative analysis
Competitive and comparative analysis
I chose three online bookshops for competitive analysis: - Booktopia, book outlet, Angus, and Robertson, to define the scope of the design. I was looking for deals, promotions, or features that provide for customers’ satisfaction and help business profit. I tried a couple of user flow scenarios to understand each feature better.
Taking inspiration from the competition
After careful business and market analysis, I had a clear idea of what features I would like to add to make an online experience as pleasurable as an in-store experience.
Such as: -
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Welcoming and engaging homepage
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Visibility of deals on the homepage
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Product bundles, different sorting criteria for easy comparison
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Easy navigation and browsing
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Uncomplicated checkout process and with more payments and shipment offers
Game plan - design, iterate and repeat
Sketching and testing the first idea
Prepared initial sketches on paper and then tested with 6-7 users to gain feedback on what they thought of the design, if everything was self-explanatory, what they would like to add /delete or change
Wireframe refinement, which led to the final high-fidelity prototype
Once the wireframe was finished, it was again time to showcase and get feedback. This time the feedback was more on cosmetic changes, but users liked the additions of features and promotions added on the website keeping the archetype in mind.
Prototype
What's next?
As it was a 2 weeks concept project, we could do more in-depth research in other areas of the website and business like some of the key areas are the community aspect of the website, categorisation of books, data sourcing for book reviews and ratings, and deeper consideration of the Abbey's loyalty program.
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Doing more usability testing.
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Discussion with business and CMS team to see the scope of changes
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Align with the budget, time, and staff, the addition of some features which could help business
Reflection
Importance of e-commerce
The world of eCommerce is immense and only grew faster as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic.
Always check in about the purpose
Understanding customers who all come with different needs and thought processes make UX design very interesting.
Look at what's out there
Analysing the competitors will show you where the opportunities are.