Popular Bookstore has been locally known as a neighborhood store for books and stationaries. By offering a wide range of books online and ways to reserve and collect books in-store, Popular was on their way to shining their services with the online shopping platform. With the key to improving the online experience for shoppers, the solution was to revamp the website that allows easy book searching and discoverability to purchase by incorporating UX research and design process in 2 weeks.
From the interviews and user study, we found out that a fraction of people do know of their online presence but because Popular bookstore is located just a few walks away from their house, they would choose to drop by the physical store, aside from buying books but also to purchase stationary sets.
Finding Pain points
To understand the user’s pain points from using the current Popular Online Bookstore, we conducted Usability testing with a pool of testers. We learned that category labels weren’t familiar with Popular shoppers and users weren’t engaged in the process.
After rounds of visiting the biggest popular store in Singapore @ bras basah together with user interviews, we found out that they know where to find the books they need in the store. That leads us to a hypothesis of categorizing online books the same way as the physical store.
To prove our hypothesis, we conducted Information Architecture, tree testing using low-fi Wireframe with our pool of testers again. After 3 rounds of iteration, we pointed out some gaps in the user flow and where things were working great.
An opportunity for Popular Bookstore to increase the relevance online is by providing users with a seamless omnichannel experience.
In-store digital experience to speed up the book searching process and loyalty program for improved engagement with Popular members.