Hoot.ae is the 1st cooperative marketplace in UAE, it is a multi vendor marketplace platform designed to benefit, primarily members of the ADCC as investors in the community, and secondarily all residents in the UAE, with the ones that decide to become subscribers,rewarded with actual cash.
Hoot.ae platform was facing as my manager was calling it "a free falling", the website was collapsing, the website was losing users dramatically and exponentially, a huge problems occur, starting from marketing, packaging, delivery, website development issues and of course UI/UX problems.
My main goal was to discover the problems related to UI/UX, and design a new concept for the platform in a very short time with a very limited resources.
Ideally, I would start my design thinking process by knowing my users, and from that point, I can move on with the designing process, but since the cooperative already defined its users and also I hadn't information about what is going on, and why the website is losing its users, of course, there is a lot of other issues as I mentioned earlier that they for sure affecting the user experience, but I was responsible on the digital experience, apart from the technical and development issues, the website was facing a lack of consistency in the UI, as shown below in the images, but this also cannot be a good reason for losing users, I had to find a way to hit pain points, and since this is an e-commerce platform in the first place, I started my way by conducting primary research, my research was based on creating an. an effective way to dig deep into the issues that the "users" were facing, so I came up with the idea of using one of the most effective methods in these types of situations, in my opinion, this method is called Net promoter score survey (NPS), this KPI measures the customer's experience, and predict business growth, and since our business growth was decreasing, this KPI will help us to hit points, the other reason for using such method is in the secret of surveys, it is easy for the user and can be digested in a good way.
On the other hand, I was facing a tiny problem, what is the ideal question we should put in the survey to classify our users since using NPS will cluster our users into three groups. Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and referring others, fueling growth. Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings. and finally, Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth. These three groups. I conducted secondary research based on research published by Harvard Business School, the research concluded that different industries have different "ideal questions" to include in NPS, and our "ideal questions" was as shown below in the survey I prepared for our users.
Since I did not want the survey to be shaped or looks like it is about knowing net promoter score, I had to do a full normal survey about users ecommerce habits on the website.
I conducted the survey and the results were shocking, of course I expected a negative numbers, but the numbers weren't reflecting what is really going on, so I had to come up with another idea, to find out why the results are not matching the current situation and I found an article also published by Harvard Business School, the article was pointing one of the situation might be faced while conducting NPS, the conclusion of the study was telling us that NPS sometime might tell us the overall user experience and in a lot of cases it will not tell us the exact pain points of the users during their user journey while using the platform, so I had to use another type of survey, it is called measuring satisfaction scores.
The new result were mindblowing, this time it was reflecting in a very effective way, the exact pain point that made our users drop the website, the results are shown below.
The new result were mindblowing, this time it was reflecting in a very effective way, the exact pain point that made our users drop the website. The results helped me to come up with the following findings:
Addressing the pain points of my users, helped me to start my design thinking process in its normal and ideal path, along the way my journey, I created a various solutions for multiple problems, using a well established methods, and with a little help of one of the great books I had to read during my work, to come up with a solutions for e-commerce platform. This book called Assortment and Merchandising Strategy: Building a Retail Plan to Improve Shopper Experience written by Constant Berkhout, this book is real guide for demonstrating how retailers can tap into shoppers’ needs for variety without increasing complexity and stress, this innovative book combines cutting-edge research with hands-on, practical frameworks. For example, since this is an ecommerce platform, it is a very important thing that the users have a counties user journey, with a different scenarios, either after completing their purchasing successfully or while they are moving around inside the website, another thing that the book helped me with, was the meaning of the merchandising of the assortment, I kept asking myself while I was doing my competitors analysis, why this item is here and why this one in the last, and during the research, I came out the the following arrangement.
Users did not have an actual technical problem or reaching any element in the home page, the only comments were about the shape of the merchandising.
User were facing a problem with the search bar itself, if felt annoying and not a user friendly, no suggestion and no search icon to use, users had to press enter every time, and search bar was showing search indexing expressions (from backend)
Some products did not have a product image, users had to click on an empty space for that, no further information about products, and it is a dead end, the user journey finish after clicking on a product, no related products or any suggestions.
Comparing products was a pain for users, this is based on the previous point of not having enough information or in another words, products are not based on a solid attributes.
Add to cart felt weird, the animation and the way that a user notified that a product was added successfully is not convenient, another big problem was the stock amount and limitations, no clear criteria for determining that.
Checkout was super annoying for users, the layout is a mess, no back button and no clear steps for users, everything is not clear enough for users, and it is not giving the user the feeling of secured payment process.
Since this is an e-commerce platform, and following the famous Jacob's law, users spend more time on other websites than yours, this means our users need to feel the same feeling for other e-commerce platforms, in another words, we are not going to invent the wheel, I spent most of my time on the ideation stage, since we are going on a full prototype, I used both HMW and Crazy eights exercises to stimulate ideas.
In the following image below for example, I used the following criteria from mr. Berkhout's book to create our merchandising, the book also mentioned the rule of 7, or as we as uxers now as Miller's law, the rest of the ideation is shown as a results on the final design for the first iteration.
Due to the tight schedule and lack of time, I started the first iteration immediately, after finishing my research, we decided to work on a full hi-fi prototype and test it, instead of working on a lo-fi prototype, I applied my research directly and based on that I applied a various design laws such as Jacob's law and Hick's law, etc..
Navigation: Considering how many categories Hoot list, choosing to keep the “Categories menu“ hidden allows users to focus more easily on the search bar. Most users already have an item in mind that they would like to purchase. As such having all the categories on display isn’t as much of priority. ”Hamburger menu symbolon the other hand is one that is easily identifiable in the case that Hoot user does choose to use it.
Search: Placing search bar in the middle of the top of the page. This makes it easily accessible for its customers by featuring it in the area. In searching, users are also able to complete their task faster, because of the search predictions.As a customer type, Hoot provides a drop down list of what you could be potentially searching for. Since Hoot offers so many products, it also allows you to begin filtering your search before you havemenu to the left side of the search area allows users to refine their search within a specific department.
Carousels: It has number of purposes: 1- Some Carousels are based upon the purchases a user made in the past.2- They allow user to see items that are inspired by his/her shopping trends or related items what he/she has viewed recently.Also Carousels are used to show current deals of the day, seasonal promotions and more. Carousels are a nice way for users to preview and look at items in a quick and organized method with lots of visuals. It also prevents users from being overwhelmed with the sheer amount of results that may appear. Tailoring some carousels to the users may like without having to put much thought into the search process.
Ratings: While Sometimes users know exactly which brand they want to purchase from, there are also many times where they don’t, they simply know what item they would like but Hoot can having a daunting amount of options. In this situation users frequently make use of the ratings they found on each item. Seeing how many times they have been rated and the number of starts they have highly influence users their purchase decisions. The morestars and reviews that a product has, the more users are willing to trust it and choose it over another. Having the rating directly on the search results page also saves time. Although users sometimes want to read more in-depth reviews written by users once they have clicked on the actual product, having the stars right under each results, help users what they feel more informed decision. It also prevents users from having to open multiple products to see and compare ratings.
Since Hoot.ae was my first e-commerce platform, I learned a lot, I had to read too many and dig deep into the resources, I have learned that e-commerce journey can be different from other journeys, I have learned that it is not easy to determined the merchandising of your platform, every element and product need to have a meaning and to push forward the customer journey, basically if you can convert your visitors into a customers, then you hit a success. And finally, sometime you don't need a full product to launch, in Hoot.ae case, creating a minimum valuable product (MVP) was a great start, because e-commerce platform really learn from user through the journey, learning never stops.