ANTO YUKON Case Study — Increase online sales
Anto Yukon is a soap and body care company based in Canada and is committed to ethical and sustainable small-batch production. Products are inspired by beautiful Canadian landscapes and are packaged in unique and contemporary art prints.
The challenge
Our team was faced with a specific problem by the owner of the business. Currently the Anto Yukon website is doing a great job selling to stockists, but has not seen any success with online consumer sales.
After researching the Google Analytics available, browsing her current website and asking her specific questions we came to the conclusion that we needed to create something that would attract the millennial eyes and their hearts. Our goal was to redesign the Anto Yukon website to reflect the aesthetics and philosophies of their consumers and ultimately, increase the customer conversion rate and overall online sales by:
- Creating a new Home page
- Revamping the About page
- Update the Shop
- Revitalize the Product page.
Design Process
Research
The first step in our project was creating different surveys to give to our target audience. We wanted to make people understand what they are looking for when they want to buy a new soap, why they are they buying it and most important if they actually know what are they purchasing.
We also interviewed store clerks and asked them what pushes the customer to buy a new product and if they need help during the process. We mostly wanted to know if they read the label and packaging and if they ask questions about the product.
At the end of our research we found out that,
CUSTOMERS
ranked the following as one of the most important factors when buying artisanal soap:
1 Ingredients, Scent, Skin-care benefit
2 Packaging, Brand, Eco-friendly, Price
3 Availability, Convenience
And
STORES
found the following qualities of Anto Yukon most attractive to their customers:
1 Packaging
2 Yukon/Canadian story
3 Scent
4 Ingredient
We also compared some of the direct and indirect competitors that Anto Yukon has. We found that while some concentrate their attention on the visually pleasing aspects some of the user were more on the interested in the information. We concluded our first week by agreeing that our website would have need to be visually pleasing but at the same time provide information they need without wasting their time.
Persona
We created a persona for a typical user of Anto Yukon based on our online research. We based the persona on the personal interviews we conducted (which consisted of a lot of coffee and long nights). We identified the following persona to be our target:
Her need is:
To buy artisanal soaps that are beautiful, unique and contain natural ingredients so that she can use them to decorate her home and impress her guests.
Her pain points are:
The lack of availability when she wants to buy a new artisanal bar soap. She is unsure of the quality and benefits of the ingredients.
What motivates her:
When she wants to buy a product she looks to see if there are any unique and natural ingredients, if they have visually beautiful packaging, if they can be given as presents to her friends or family, if they smell nice and if there are any skin care benefits associated with it.
User stories
User scenario
This was the fun and challenging part of the project for me. I learned a lot in the process. One thing to keep in mind is that we have to remain focused of what the persona wants and what the client wants to achieve, is easy to get carried away by your own thought and make up our own scenarios, luckily our teacher was there to help us remain focused and narrow down the problem.
1. Maritza loves artisanal soaps and came across Anto Yukon while browsing on instagram. She loves the look of the soaps and would like to know more about their ingredients and scents so that she can make an educated purchase.
2 Maritza is looking for a high quality soap. She loves great smelling soaps but is allergic to artificial ingredients. Maritza knows that Anto Yukon soaps look and smell great but she would also like to find out more information about the ingredients, benefits and how they are made.
User flow
This user flow represents the primary path that the persona make in order to purchase a product.
We identified 5 main groups for our design
And we took inspiration from several other site
On this particular website, we like that when you hover over the product it reveals the main ingredients, we found this to be very helpful since on the soap product there is often a list of scientific ingredients but many people do not know what they actually are, and we saw that by showing the users some of the main ingredients they would understand much faster what the smell of the soap was.
We liked the asymmetric shot some other brands used.
We also wanted to show what the Yukon is and give the user a sense of nature and openness and relaxations.
Idea Sketches Design Execution
Then we quickly sketched several options and explored ideas according to user flow, we went crazy at the beginning then we narrowed it down to 4 realistic ideas and we ended up with something that looked like this
Design Execution
Among all of the designs, we combined them into one as a potential solution to the problem.
Next step
Usability Testing
Test the prototype with actual users, one of my personal favourites but at the same time I am worried that the user would destroy our hardwork with just few clicks if he finds that the project does not make sense, if it is complicated to understand and not user friendly.
There is no space for distractions I need to be focused.
- GOALS
— To observe if the website assists the user in gaining more knowledge about the product scents.
— Discover if the website properly informs the user about Anto Yukon company, their ingredients and processes.
- TASKS
— You’re looking to spruce up your bathroom and heard that the Kluane soap from Anto Yukon is highly recommended. Go to the Anto website and search for Kluane soap.
— Explore the website with the goal of learning more about Anto Yukon
- FEEDBACK
— Easy to find the product via multiple paths
— Organization of product info a bit unstructured
— Liked the “Add to Cart” option on the product page
— Easy to find the About page
— Important information displayed clearly
— Got a good feeling of the products being natural and healthy
Some of the changes we made
Final product
Summary
This project has tought me how important the team, and not only the process, is to solving problems and creating a great product. Having confidence in my team and their abilities was key in providing the client with a great product that addressed both their issues, and the users.
Thanks for reading this
