HELPING A PLANT SHOP GET MORE ONLINE CUSTOMERS
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OVERVIEW
Project Length: ~2 Weeks
Tools: Figma, Slack, Zoom
Participants: Lester Choy (solo project)
Deliverables: Hi fi Website redesign on happy path
Type: Concept project
THE CLIENT
Sinflora is a local plant nursery based in Singapore. They pride themselves to be a business that is part of a family-friendly community that provides good quality products. The business model is based on customer service and keeping it local. They source from a variety of suppliers so we’re able to offer our customers the best range of products at the most competitive prices.
BRIEF
A while ago, Sinflora saw an opportunity to support the local community by allowing people to order some products online. They built their own website but were not pleased with the results.
“We have plenty of website visitors yet few completed purchases.”
Through an improved eCommerce website, we want to showcase our products while maintaining our brand image: “small shop” appeal and great customer service.
DESIGN PROCESS
Using the 5 stage Design Thinking Model proposed by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (the “d. school”). The stages of this Design Thinking process are as follows:
1. Discover 2. Define 3. Ideate 4. Prototype 5. Test
WHAT THE CURRENT SITE LOOKS LIKE
To kick off the discovery process, I did a simple plus/delta exercise on Sinflora’s existing website. My initial interaction with their website was not promising, there was a significant amount of delta’s compared to pluses and just simply browsing through the website proved to be a very unpleasant experience.
From that point, I knew that it would be a better decision to remake their website from the ground up based on the research that has been conducted instead of trying to make improvements to their current website.
COMPETITOR/COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
To get a better understanding of the competition, I did additional plus/delta analysis on successful local plant nurseries and IKEA which I thought was a good example in presenting inventory on their website.
The key takeaways we got from them:
Navigation is easy and user-friendly, Visual design is nice
Both websites are responsive, load quickly, and allow users to easily find and view most of the available products on the first page. It offers clear navigation with a category filter function and a well-designed checkout page. It also delivers consistent branding, high-quality photography, and detailed information about the plants, giving customers a comprehensive understanding of the products.
Offer additional value by giving recommendations and tips for selecting the best product for you
It provided supplemented information on deciding on the best product and other marketing features like recommendations and unique categories to make the user more inclined to browse.
Enhanced convenience and engagement features
The website offers a “notify when available” feature for out-of-stock items, allowing customers to stay informed. It also presents sales and promotions, and provides multiple delivery methods for added convenience.
Gives information of the product so that you can make the best decision
The website offers comprehensive product information, empowering you to make informed decisions and choose the best option.
RESEARCH GOALS
So with all that in mind, I thought of some research goals to get a better understanding of Sinflora and to discover hidden opportunities that can be addressed at the solution phase.
I wanted to find out:
- Context of going to a nursery website
- Feelings about buying plants or gardening tools online
- Expectations from shopping from plant stores online
USER INTERVIEWS
Taking those research goals I quickly drafted a discussion guide and sought out people to interview. I narrowed my demographic to people who have bought plants for their homes, and I found a total of 5 people to interview. During these interviews, I dug deeper into the frustrations and expectations users face when purchasing plants online.
I then distilled our findings into an affinity map, which helped us spot trends and patterns in users’ answers.
INSIGHTS/LEARNINGS
The interviews felt like numerous puzzle pieces of what users want and trying to piece them together to find an overall opinion.
Essentially all users wanted these 4 things:
- Convenience
- Reliability
- Clear information
- Credibility
Specific categories are used when searching for plants:
Furthermore, they were also very vocal about the certain categories or aspects of plants they want to be able to use when filtering their search for plants.
Clear idea of what they want:
Users have a good idea of what they want and they just want to be able to search and acquire what they want from the get-go.
Delivery options are considered:
Participants also care about how their plants will be delivered to their doorstep.
With this in mind, I aimed to make our final solution as simple to search as possible to let users get in and out of there as quickly as possible while having a pleasant experience.
Persona
Taking all the learnings that I had through the interviews, I created a persona.
Meet Poppy, she’s a new homeowner looking to jazz up her place with some plants. Poppy represents a prospective customer who is looking at nurseries around her area to buy specific plants for her new home.
Creating Poppy’s persona was really useful because it helped shape the ideas I had by addressing her needs and frustrations. It definitely helped to empathize with her during our design process.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Once we had a clear understanding of our user’s needs and the challenges they face, we defined the overall goal for this project in a problem statement.
Poppy needs to find an easy and reliable way to buy specific plants online but she gets frustrated because she doesn’t have the time to buy it in person.
HOW MIGHT WE
Having defined the problem, it was now time to find a solution. Since the problem was rather straightforward and the business expectations for the nursery were clear, my how might we statement came naturally.
How might we help Poppy search and purchase the plant she wants without any issues?
CARD SORTING
To get a clearer idea of how the inventory on the website will be organized, I invited 6 people to do an open card sort from the objects below.
Aside from the occasional quirky categories the participants have made, the results below were written by the majority.
6/6 Pots & planters
6/6 Small planters
6/6 Tools
6/6 Medium planters
5/6 Accessories
6/6 Big planters
SITE MAP
Taking the new knowledge learned from the open card sort, I applied it to make a sitemap
THE SOLUTION
It was clear from the research that our solution had to encapsulate the following:
Simplicity: Make searching and navigating for the user easy
Clarity: Communicating what is expected from the user at each stage
Control: Letting the user have ownership of their journey
USER FLOW
With this in mind, I created a happy path user flow to show our new navigation capabilities of the website. I created a user flow that showed the whole process from choosing a plant to purchasing it.
WIRE FRAME
With all the research done it is finally time to do some wireframing. Taking inspiration from the websites I used for comparative and competitive analysis, I sketched and designed a couple of key features for what would be included in the Sinflora website.
FEATURES
The features that was included was also was pulled from what participants would like to see during the user interviews
- Filter search bar
- Customer review section
- Easy picture viewer
- Clear and informative checkout flow
USABILITY TESTING
We synthesized our user test findings by placing post-it notes across each wireframe. This made it easy to spot which areas of the page needed the most improvement.
The key insights we gathered were overall all quite positive aside from some visual design issues such as icons weren’t clear enough and writing got some things through the experience could be better.
High level feedback was also provided that made me rethink about how I should look at certain sections such as the homepage, but due to the time constraints I went ahead to prioritize on things I could address and look into the high level feedback on the next iteration round.
DESIGN GUIDE
MOODBOARD
Once the immediate issues of the design were addressed, I went ahead and developed a design guide and mood board to dictate the look and feel of the website. I was trying to go for feelings of warm, friendly, down to earth, and cleanliness in the visual design.
Deliver
Finally, I delivered the high fidelity prototype which you can access here.
Our final design includes:
Home page redesign:
New more impactful layout that gets you to all available products straight away. Additionally, a filter sidebar was included to search for the users desired plants based on their own prerequisites (since most users mostly have an idea of what they want before they shop)
Product detail page redesign:
A new layout of the product detail page with a clear presentation of the information on the product and an emphasis on photos so users can see how the products would be able to look like in a home setting.
Customer review module was included, users liked that they were others to socially validate their choice.
Finally a recommended product module was included as well to improve shopping experience.
Check out flow:
A step-by-step checkout flow to give customers a clear idea of where they are at in the checkout process. Visual design and typography were emphasized so as to display the information with a clear hierarchy.
Next steps
Desirability test.
Conducting a desirability test after creating the hi-fi prototype will definitely provide more feedback to iterate on considering I only did 1 usability test.
Home page doesn’t feel like a home page
Due to the direct entry into the product list on the initial landing page, the website’s first impression lacked the inviting atmosphere commonly found on other websites that employ a clear homepage layout. To remedy this, it might be beneficial to consider incorporating a hero section.
Indoor vs outdoor
Singapore is a country with a permanent tropical climate. With that in mind it was hard to make a clear distinction between an indoor plant and an outdoor plant. Additional consultation with a plant expert and some research and testing would be useful to see if this aspect would be sought after for Sinflora
Add info section 101
I would like to include a section that provides basic knowledge of plant care to new plant buyers so they would have the confidence to keep them alive after purchase.
Takeaways
Find the deeper issue and then validate those ideas with the users :
While the project came along smoothly, I felt like my problem statement on helping to save users time by providing an easier to use website felt too broad. It would be useful to dig deeper to find out why users did not have more time and if they don’t have time why would they go to your website.
Talking to experts would be helpful :
Even though I’m overall satisfied with the end result, I am aware that this project did not include things that address the nuances of gardening. It would be to my benefit to consult an expert because I might have missed out on crucial information regarding plant care that I could have included in the design.
More tests the better :
If I had to redo this project again, I would aim to incorporate a greater number of tests throughout each phase involving user outreach. While the gathered findings did unveil certain trends and insights, I believe that gathering more inputs would yield more conclusive answers, potentially leading to an improved solution.
