Research Approach
Since I was the only UX resource on staff with key deliverables and dates identified through out that year, I was given the option to locate UX research firms through our RFP process. Once a firm was selected, I on-boarded them, lead the study design, and manage the research they conducted and socialized the results up to our leadership.
Designing the Study
The RFP I wrote outlined our goals and a short list of research questions we wanted to answer. Once the research firm was selected and onboard, I reached out to our marketing analytics, customer support, and other key stakeholders for input to help develop the study goals and questions.
Ultimately, we determined that a brief questionnaire coupled with a usability study then followed by a series of online discussions with participants around each step of the purchase process would be the best study design.
Coordination and Management
We decided to leverage our inside sales team for recruiting participants. I managed the process of determining which customers to target working with stakeholders from our online channel management, marketing, sales, and analytics teams. During this process, I also wrote proposals and gained approval for participant gratuities. We were fortunate to offer our participants a chance to win 1 of 3 iPads in a drawing at the conclusion of the study.
Results and Impact
The results of the study surfaced 35 issues. I identified the top 6 that were deterring customers from purchasing online. Together with my online channel management I formed a plan to prioritize and address them.
Impact on project in flight
Prior to the user study, I facilitated a short series of sessions with the Online Services Team and key Merchandising Team stakeholders. In these sessions we reviewed and documented, with a few pounds of sticky notes, opportunities for improvement in the way product information is displayed on the site.
Of course, we came up with a lot of great ideas that were unrelated to the problem users identified, but we also touched on a couple of their top pain points - pain points 5 & 6 on the Customer Pain Map. This was particularly interesting to my channel manger, so we prioritized those pain points to address first since we had initial thoughts already cooking.
A series of sketches in pencil show initial ideas.
Lo-fidelity wireframe refinement on pain point solutions 5 & 6 vs live version tested in the user study.
Impact one year post refinements
Online purchases have risen by 14%, email and fax orders reduced by 7%.
A rise in customer satisfaction; one customer bought the entire IT department hoodies as a thank you gift.