Case Study: E-commerce, piñata store:
This is the second project I worked with during the Bootcamp at Ironhack and the challenge was to add an online shop to an existing web page that didn’t have one to begin with.
Introduction
Our brief was to find a local business that did not have an online appearance for the sale of its products.
There is a nice store in Berlin, that sells party supplies and specializes in handcrafted piñatas for all kinds of events, specially Birthday parties for children but only have a physical store and no online appearance. They make this products as a results of the workshops that are meant to treat people with mental illness.
Qualitative Research
First of all, we interviewed the person in charge of the sales who was also the stakeholder.
There were some questions asked such as delivery time, production processes, type of products they sell and who is the most common client.
As the store is located in one of the most family friendly neighborhoods in Berlin, filled with young families, we could start targeting our user.
Quantitative Research
After some insights from the stakeholder, we created an online survey and sent it to our most likely possible user. We had around 15 answers, in which we could find out the following:
- Most of the people are between 30 and 40 years old.
- They have kids.
- The most likely event for which they need a piñata is for their children’s birthday parties.
- They agreed to spend 15–20 euros more on a hand-made piñata.
- The majority buys their party supplies online and would prefer to find everything in just one place.
- All of them would like to get the items delivered.
Problem statement:
Parents need a more efficient way to acquire party supplies, helping them saving time and achieving their party ideas successfully.
Hypothesis:
We believe that creating an online shop with a clear logical categorization for party supplies, quick and easy payment options, and transparency on delivery status, will most benefit busy parents to efficiently plan their events. We will validate this by increasing the number of sales significantly online.
The investigation was then able to confirm our hypotheses.
An affinity diagram was then assembled to break down point by point the most favorable situations for our potential user.
Persona
After both research, qualitative and quantitative, it was time to define the user persona or our main possible customer for the online shop.
It was established that the persona was going to be a working mother, married, living in Prenzlauer Berg, one of the most family friendly districts in Berlin, and she was on her mid thirties.
She is a person who really needs to save time in every activity she does, specially by planning and purchasing party supplies for her son.
Later on, everything was going into a better path. We decided then to do a SWOT diagram to even understand better the strengths and weakness for the e-commerce.
Later, a possible scenario for the user’s journey was proposed. The main pain points of our user is the moment when she needs to find her party supplies but her favorite store does not offer delivery services and does not have an online catalog.
We started with the ideation process by doing a Round Robin method and together gather a lot of nice ideas that later were mixed and taken to the final design of the online shop.
After the first ideation, the process of the Mid-fi wire screens started, so that the testing stage could be done properly.
After doing the test stage with 3 possible users, results were immediately obtained on which were the small modifications in the interaction that were pertinent to them.
The following was a desktop study in which the moodboard and the styles that would be applied to the final color palette for the UI were defined.
Hi-Fi Prototype:
Conclusions
It has been concluded that by having the basic tools for the study of the user experience, remarkable results can be achieved in which the stakeholder benefits as well as their potential clients. This is reflected in the increase in their sales and in the arrival of new customers who can access them through the use of web pages and digital tools.
