Executed a 2-week design challenge to improve the online shopping experience for a local business (provided) by relating design decisions to a specific persona (also provided).
Goal: Design an online shopping experience that meets the goals of the given persona, business, and brand.
Provided: local business (Standard Brewing), the persona (Lauren)
Standard Brewing's existing site:
Provided Persona
Existing site breakdown/ summary: Looking through Standard Brewing's website, it was not very user friendly, especially as it relates to their information architecture. Meanwhile, their e-commerce efforts were nonexistent, having no opportunity to make any purchases through the website. The only item their customers have the option of inquiring about are ordering kegs to go. However, the process to purchase a keg to go requires their customers to call in and inquire.
Considering the given persona, Lauren, who has a high level of tech empathy, needs fast shipping, and overall authority on products she purchases, it was clear she would not be a customer of Standard Brewing given their current site design.
Lauren is unable to make a quick purchase on Standard Brewing’s website, because it is disorganized and outdated with information. This is causing Lauren frustration, and Standard Brewery a loss in sales.
How might Standard Brewery improve their website to meet customer needs/wants so they can generate more sales?
Before anything, I took a trip to Standard Brewery to experience and observe the Brewery for myself. After sampling a few beers, talking to the bar tender and owner, I concluded that Standard Brewery had a lot of opportunities to increase their ecommerce. Specifically, renting out their event space, serving food, merchandise, and lastly kegs to go. These became the main pillars I would come to focus on when reconsidering their information architecture to their website in prioritizing the goal of this project: improve the shopping experience which in turn increases sales.
Hypothesis: If we utilize all of the sale points that Standard Brewing has to offer by incorporating them into their ecommerce, and improve the shopping experience for these sale points, their customers will have a positive experience, resulting an increase in sales.
To understand how these newly added sale points would be integrated into Standard Brewing's website, I created an existing sitemap of their current website, and then a version that would include the new sale points.
Next, I needed to validate the new sitemap design before moving forward. Creating a low-fidelity prototype, and specifically testing the user's ability to navigate from each page across the site dictated how to make adjustments where needed.
Results:
Participant #1 Verbage was difficult - there’s events happening, didn’t make it all the ay down to bottom to see host events
Participant #2
Beer profile link to food menu
Add link to hats
Remove 3 items, just have one in the cart
Remove item lockable in the cart
“Inquire book, I’m not 100% sure I want to book, just wanting to learn more.”
Don’t use as strong words as Confirm Booking, allow for more info
Oh I don’t need to pay?
Participant # 3
Select beer failure - Default is to go to select beer - jumped to ordering a keg
Would want my own party, not someone else’s (why not to go to events tab) went to events after looking at tab
About page - landing not linking
“Beers” instead of beer releases
Participant #4
Host event same format as the rest, makes it blend in
Looks for footer, checks out blog,
Don’t see a place to sign up for news letter - place for the blog newsletter sign up
Participant #5
I like the hero menu
Beer options - specific beer
Reserve keg would be expected to be a button, lower right corner, thought it would be a button
Left hand menu feels old school - probably size of the margin
Why can’t I pick it up in the store, would like to pick up with my keg
Include required (and non required fields)
Footers on some and not others
From these results, I made XYZ changes. I then tested the design again to ensure the changes made were effective and on course towards our goal.
Additionally, I did a competitive analysis to see how other low-to-mid sized breweries were organizing their websites and what digital sale points they were presenting in efforts towards their ecommerce.
