Note: Full case study can only be accessed upon request.
The highest priority will always be given to improving the digital experience of purchasing products and services of the business. Since the pandemic, BetterWorldBooks (BWB) feel a dire need to improve its online experience to drive purchases of its book stocks and make it easier for people to order some products online. They have built their own website but are not pleased with the results. There have been plenty of website visitors yet few completed purchases.
Through an improved eCommerce website, BWB wants to showcase their products while maintaining its brand image, unique selling point, product appeal, and great customer service.
To get first-hand qualitative and quantitative insights of Better World Books’ current website state. I conducted 9 user interviews, survey forms, and usability tests of the current website. And below are the insights I got:
Abel “The Casual”
Goals:
- Discovering new books by the author and genre preferred
- Ability to preview books and cover
- Discover Book bargains fast
Cookie “The Prime”
Goals:
- To have a simplified browsing experience
- Make search more immersive and specific
- Better information about the books
- Discovering new books by the genre preferred
To further validate the user’s motivations, pain points and goals. I consolidated the data gathered in the interviews to formulate their buying journey in the current website.
Abel needs to be able to have better suggestions so that he will have better bargains and experience and spend more time browsing the shop to help in deciding on the purchase.
Cookie needs to be able to have a better way to search to get better information so that she will have more immersive and seamless browsing and buying from the shop.
An IMPROVED BetterWorldBooks eCommerce website experience though:
User Flows are defined by Personal Recommendations, Deals, Book Finding, Purchasing, and Wishlist (collections).
I.A. was done with card sorting with the users for better and improved sorting.
After a wireframing sprint. Here is the overview of the visual.
The initial usability test for the first draft of the 2 iterations (Desktop and Mobile) is generally positive with an average adaption rate of 9.12/10. There were some feedback on clarity and other functions hence the improvements below:
Although the general feedback is good on average. It will be more insightful to add more personas as book-buying patterns of users worldwide are very different, especially with the demography and interests of the users.
Some things some of the popular online bookstores fail to provide is a usable “preview” to really get the feel, especially buying instead of generic photos.
On a small scale, the UX methodology helped me trim down all assumptions and cater to my qualified users.
