Understanding Consumer Needs in the Digital Space

OVERVIEW

When a botanical e-retailer sought to redesign its online platform, they turned to Heist to help understand the pain points that users currently face and identify key areas for improvement.

To achieve this, Heist developed two personas, a loyal customer and a corporate customer – as well as a detailed customer journey map for each, supported by in-depth interviews, observations, heuristic evaluation and four user testing sessions. At the end of the project, Heist presented the findings and kick-started a two-day workshop which took the client’s cross-functional team through the basics of Design Thinking.

PROCESS

In order to assist our client with the re-design of their online platform, Heist used a mix of in-depth interviews with four key users and two stakeholder interviews. The customer interviews focused on the customer’s online experiences, pain points relating to the website as well as the delivery process. The stakeholder interviews revolved around business challenges and future goals. Findings from these interviews were translated into business opportunities as well as the development of two key user personas.

Observations in the two physical stores were also conducted to understand how products are displayed, how customers interact with them, and how each store is spatially laid out. The findings were then translated to insights relating to the online experience.

The team then identified key screens in the user journey and developed a custom Heuristic Evaluation matrix to provide quantitative results and identify areas for improvement. Usability issues within the website were detected and a list of recommendations with both short and long-term solutions was presented to the client

In addition, Heist conducted a usability session with each of the 4 key user profiles: a new user, a loyal customer, a lapsed customer and a corporate customer. Each user was asked to perform key tasks on the website in order to gauge its usability. Questions and tasks were tailored to each user profile to gain more accurate data. The team also provided quantitative data that can be used as a point of reference for future usability tests.

Heist shared back learnings at the start of a two-day workshop which was attended by members of the client’s cross-functional team. During the workshop, Heist presented the basics of Design Thinking along with exercises following each step. This gave the client’s team the opportunity to work together in small groups and reach outside of the zone of comfort in order to come up with prototypes that they were able to test at the end of the second day.