POPULAR Online
TLDR Version
Problem:
While there is market opportunity for online book purchasing, users are not choosing POPULAR Online as their preferred web store over others.
Solution:
To increase online traffic and sales, the online experience is to be enhanced so as to encourage users to purchase books online.
Final Prototype:
High fidelity and responsive prototype.
OVERVIEW
Project 4 for the User Experience Design Immersive at General Assembly was a team project to solve a hypothetical client-identified existing problem and to pitch our solution.
(Hypothetical) Client: POPULAR
Duration: 2 weeks
Deliverable:
- Responsive prototype
- Client-facing presentation
Role:
- Doren Ho [UX Design]
- Michelle Koo [UX and Visual Design]
About POPULAR Online
POPULAR Online is the web store of Singapore's largest bookstore chain, POPULAR Bookstore.
Client Brief
POPULAR Online has not been very successful in terms of online traffic or sales, and the management has identified some issues to work on. First and foremost, the website’s interface should be redesigned to make navigation easier and allow customers to quickly find the book they want.
Also, attention must be paid to POPULAR members, and how to promote the online store for them.
Our requirements:
- Redesign web store UI to make it more appealing.
- Redesign navigation to make book searching an easy process.
- Improve engagement of POPULAR members with the web store.
- Integrate online and retail model more closely to serve customers better.
RESEARCH
Target User
After a preliminary round of interviews with current online and retail book shoppers, we found that current POPULAR retail book shoppers, who have visited POPULAR Online before, provide more opportunities for the growth of the web store. This is because they already have the motivation and spending power for buying books from POPULAR.
Competitive Analysis
We studied POPULAR Online's competitor, Books Kinokuniya, to better understand POPULAR's advantage and opportunities for growth in the online bookstore industry in Singapore.
POPULAR Online falls behind in terms of website traffic for the past 3 months (May - July 2017).
Kinokuniya’s advanced search field is an edge over POPULAR’s lack of it because it helps users to find the book they want more easily. Furthermore, Kinokuniya offers exclusive member price that would better engage its members online.
Kinokuniya offers book recommendations based on the book customers are viewing, and the estimated dispatch date and stock status of the book, facilitating book discovery and ordering decision.
Contextual Inquiry
To gain a deeper perspective of a POPULAR retail customer, I became the POPULAR retail customer. I went to POPULAR Central, largest POPULAR retail store in Singapore, and performed participant observation in context. This retail experience was crucial for gaining a better perspective of our users' needs and how retail and online models are integrated.
Labels on several book shelves promoting online purchase with 10% discount on the first online order (and additional 10% off for POPULAR members).
According to the customer service, the retail book collection varies from store to store, and is only a subset of the more comprehensive online book collection, which is POPULAR’s entire book collection. Therefore, customers can enjoy greater variety of books on the web store than in the retail ones.
During a 15-minute conversation, I observed that the customer service staff was rather unfamiliar with the online store policies and how it works and resorted to finding for information on the web store three times.
User Research
As we only had 3 days to gather our user research, we recruited 8 individuals who fit the profile of our target user for user interviews and usability tests of the current web store on desktop and mobile. We want to know their needs and pain points that are deterring them from buying books from the web store, so as to convert them into online customers as well.
We conducted user interviews to find out their behaviours and expectations and their problems when buying books. Additionally, we observed how they use the current web store on desktop and mobile in usability tests to get feedback on the website functionality and gain insights into their motivations and satisfaction.
We synthesised notes from our interviews and observations with an affinity diagram to uncover underlying our target users' motivations.
To focus our design efforts on solving users’ problems, we summarised our user research into two personas.
To understand our user behaviour better and reveal gaps and opportunities, we illustrate how our personas might interact with POPULAR over time and across channels from their perspectives. Overall, most of our personas’ needs and pain points occur when searching for books and so this is where we would focus our design efforts to improve conversion rate.
Based on our user research, we defined the problem that we wanted to solve as follows:
While there is market opportunity for online book purchasing, users are not choosing POPULAR Online as their preferred web store over others.
SOLUTION
We defined our proposed solution as:
To increase online traffic and sales, the online experience is to be enhanced so as to encourage users to purchase books online.
Strategy
Based on the user needs and pain points revealed in our research, we will help POPULAR Online increase its sales and traffic, by focusing on increasing online conversion rate, improving customer engagement, and enhancing book purchasing experience.
Solution Features
Starting with the big picture of considering business impact and user needs, we prioritise our solution features that have the greatest business impact and address the greatest user needs that are revealed in our customer journey maps. These would address most of the users’ needs which are also the needs common to both personas. Addressing these needs would ease the users’ book research process on the web store and improve conversion rate.
These high priority features are: to allow users check store stock status, to provide book recommendations and curated book lists, and an advanced search field. They would address most of the users’ needs which are also the needs common to both personas. Addressing these needs would ease the users’ book research process on the web store and improve conversion rate.
As a start, we have improved the visual appeal of the web store, and improved the placement of search field, cart and member login to more conventional spots (on the right). We also allow a display of greater minimum number of book title characters for more efficient browsing of books.
The addition of advanced search button would allow users such as Darren to find the books they want more easily. Gift recommendations and curated lists would help users such as Darren and Alice to discover more variety of books easily.
On the product page, we allow users to check the store stock status for users such as Darren who are very particular about their book purchases and want to check and buy books in good condition. Book recommendations can be provided based on what the user is viewing, helping him discover more variety of related genre books as well. One way that the recommendation algorithm can be done is with machine learning.
Users can preview the first 4 and half pages of a book to better know what the book is about before buying, solving the needs of users such as Darren who are particular about their book purchases.
Users are encouraged to leave a review for the book they have purchased online by being rewarded with 15 POPULAR points (where $1 = 15 POPULAR points) upon review submission. The POPULAR points can be accumulated and go toward offsetting their future online order amounts. This can help to grow more helpful reviews for users such as Darren and Alice who rely on reviews to decide on purchase.
If users cannot find the book they want from web store, they can suggest a book for POPULAR for future consideration.
Service Design
The product/service here is the online book buying experience. Elevating this experience can be done by focusing on all touch points that make the entire experience and identifying digital and service opportunities in the entire system. Therefore, we detail each aspect of the service in our service design blueprint so as to inform implementation plan for new services.
Keeping store stock status up-to-date would require updating store stock status online constantly. Allowing users to suggest new books on web store would require reviewing and analysing these suggestions to decide whether to bring in new book collection, when, how much and how often to do so. For effective customer engagement online, encouraging users to leave reviews on web store goes hand-in-hand with responding to user feedback as appropriate, and would require monitoring of reviews to look for areas for improvement.
FINAL PROTOTYPE
We took to Axure to create high fidelity and responsive prototype.
RETROSPECTIVE
What could have been different?
Initially, our team was a trio and we had a difficult time coming together on the direction we should take in our approach. I think the bulk of it was due to the huge differences between both of our understanding of the design process and that of our (previous) third partner. At the start of the second (and also the final) week, we were only then informed by the instructor that our third partner would be leaving the team and both of us would work on the project on our own instead. Although both of us were aligned in our approach most of the time, our first week was pretty much wasted and we had basically only the final week to complete the project. Therefore, we did not manage to perform a proper usability test on our final prototype, though our initial brief usability test on iteration was satisfactory enough for us to proceed.
What went well?
My partner and I adapted to the difficult situation our team was in and leveraged each other's strengths. Although we were a handicapped pair among our classmates who were mostly in groups of three, we did not let it get to us. Eventually, we completed the project on time and met all expectations of the project assessment.
Rethinking my approach to learning UX
Service design is not only concerned with what benefits users, but also how to create these benefits. Therefore, changes in the services can have profound implications for operations.
For example, maintaining store stock status up-to-date and analysing book suggestions by users, involve various decisions at the interface of operations management and business analyses.
I learnt the importance of seeing the overall picture in solution design as the whole point is to ensure the process is appropriate for whatever objectives I am trying to achieve.
If I could expose myself more to quantitative management science and operations research, I could understand how to design services better.
