The Stationery Struggle

How do you use UX to design a Stationery eCommerce when people largely prefer shopping instore?

The Problem Space

A local stationery company wants to expand into the online realm by creating eCommerce desktop site. However only 9.7% of participants in a 2016 Verdict Retail report on the UK stationery market shop for stationery online.

Building from this data, I delved into research to understand why this is occurring and how I can help improve these numbers in an ecommerce site.

This Project was completed solo in a 4 week sprint following the double diamond approach.

Starting from the cart up

The problem space itself feels like an oxymoron; creating an eCommerce site for a product that thrives on the tangible and “old school” methods of things such as note taking, dairying and scrap booking. However through user research I was able to find a number of areas for improvement on the current experience.

To gain qualitative data, I interviewed 7 stationery shoppers and 1 store owner to gain insight on the instore and online shopping experience. I have also conducted market research on current trends and a feature inventory on competitor sites.

From this research I hope to develop an ecommerce site that meets the users needs and resolves pain points to improve the online shopping experience and in turn increase revenue.

Key Findings

Pain points:

• Almost all participants noted that they prefer to shop in store rather than online.
• Most participants have been disappointed in the quality of an item, or that the item was not what they expected.
• Many participants noted that tactile and physical qualities were very important to them in a product.

Room for improvement:

• Many customers research their products online before purchasing and state that reviews and ratings are a big factor in their decision making.
• Customers like to sort by a collection or colour palette.

Secondary Analysis

From this, I conducted a secondary round of analysis to understand the buying habits of the customers and owners interviewed

• Many survey participants like the experience of browsing in store.
• They like to experience products hands on and conduct their own investigation and research.
• Several interviewees noted that they feel comfortable buying items similar to what they already own to avoid being let down.

Defining the User

While the sample size was small, we were required in the project brief to create 2 personas. This allowed two solutions to be created with a problem statement for each persona.

Persona 1 is Dion, a user who loves all things about the instore experience. They consider and compare the tangible qualities of items and test them against one another.

Persona 2 is Jen, they prefer online shopping as they can find everything easily and have it delivered right to their door. To avoid buyers remorse, they often stick to what they know, buying items from a similar style or collection.

Framing the Problem

To distill all of the research conducted so far, I developed two problem statements and JTBD statements:

When Jen shops online, they want to receive recommendations on products similar to ones they already own so they can avoid the product not meeting their expectations.

When Dion shops online, they want to be able to compare products to feel confident that they are making an informed purchasing decision.

Simplifying the flow & Ideation

From this I mapped out the current and future user flows to understand the areas which we can refine the experience. I also developed two HMW statements to provide clear direction moving forward.

How might we allow the user to research products within our site?

In Dion’s flow they used to open multiple browser tabs in order to research and investigate the product, watching and reading several reviews.

To streamline this I integrated a rating system within the site that draws from external sources creating a comprehensive list of reviews. I also added a comparison feature to allow the user to see side by side the features and specifications of each item.

How might we help customers find items similar to what they already own?

For Jens flow, I aimed to reduce the time spend searching and filtering items to suit her collection. The concept aims to create a page that mimics the instore experience, creating a curated list of items both owned and recommended for purchase, all informed by the users current collection and items on their wish list.

It is worth noting that within user research, I noticed a large pain point of the online shopping experience was not being able to test the tangible qualities of the item such as a pens flow and thickness. I considered solutioning a type of virtual test pad to compare online however after creating a prioritisation matrix of possible features and considering the MVP, this fell outside of the scope of this project.

Site Design

Seeing research drive something so seemingly standardised was so fascinating to me as a new UXer. I conducted an open card sort amongst 5 users to create the information architecture of the site and was so surprised to learn of some of the categories that evolved and what was at the forefront of users minds.

This research and organisation method drove which features should be at the forefront of the design, and which elements were more niche, but still essential for the secondary user.

Two of the participants were stationery fiends, wanting to filter into detailed categories such as fountain, felt tip and ball point for pens. This contrasted against the more office stationery users who simply piled all pens into one category. It informed my decision to have the ability to filter into those categories but still sort items like pens under an overall category, appealing to both user groups.

Ideation and Lofi

Informed by discovering and defining, I now felt comfortable to leap into development starting with Lofi and Midfi sketches. Due to time constraints, I had to run my usability testing on the mid fidelity design while I started developing the Hifi in Figma.

Usability Testing

To validate the design and usability I created a number of 3 click goals.

Within 3 clicks I want:

• To allow customers to research and compare the attributes of multiple items.
• To allow customers to filter their choices to a refined level.
• To help customers see reviews of the item.
• Be recommended a curated list of items similar to what they already own.

Using these 3 click goals as a base I was able to create a number of formal usability testing goals to test in maze to inform future design iterations.

Iteration 2

Learning from the insights gleaned from usability testing I was able to apply these to my second Hifi iteration. I was very impressed with these results! genuinely such a large improvement from Project 1.

Learning from both usability testing, universal design standards and UX Laws I was able to create my first project that I felt was truly tailored to the needs of my users and making a difference to the ecommerce experience.

Still many more iterations before it is polished but here's the first crack at a responsive ecommerce site for “Notable Stationery”