Home Improvement Doesn’t Have to Be Intimidating
When I was briefed with Lowe’s for our website redesign project, I wasn’t incredibly excited. For one thing, I don’t shop home improvement ever, and it always felt like a foreign subject matter to me.
What doesn’t help with that, is if the website you use to browse for home improvement is as foreign as the subject matter in itself.
Identifying the Problem
I went on the Lowe’s website for the first time and was lost in a sea of floating images, promotions, and text — this, coupled with endless scrolling, made it confusing and unclear where absolutely anything was stored on the website. We used our own observations through heuristic analysis to gauge what we believed the major problems with the website to be. We based our observations off of how the website scores for findability, accessibility, clarity, communication, usefulness, credibility, controllability, value, learnability, and delightfulness. We found problems in each of these areas, and wanted to delve deeper into specific problems users face while navigating the website.
We moved onto usability testing — by way of selecting people who fit our target criteria. Most importantly, they needed to be home improvement shoppers for personal use (vs professional) and shoppers at Amazon, Lowe’s, and Home Depot.
We started gave them a specific scenario and task to complete, followed by a few questions to get their thoughts.
Scenario: You just moved into a new house and need some home improvement done
Task: Without using the search bar, please find and compare the best dishwasher within your $399 budget and add it to your cart.
What did the users have to say about their experience?
“Ads annoyed me. I had to scroll quite a lot. Lots of useless information. Sub categories should be right up on top.”
“It’s not clean. Taking away my space with ads. Amazon doesn’t show ads — it’s more catered to what you are searching for. They use space much better. I don’t have to scroll as much.”
“It doesn’t give me confidence — there are better places to buy it. The way they have put it out… it is amateurish and I feel I can’t trust it.”
“I would prefer for the photos to have context when it comes to the navigational pages.”
Although we had performed other methods of research to identify the problem, I felt that the usability testing was most telling.
As we had to work on the actual redesign individually, amongst the multiple issues we noticed with the site, I decided to focus on the issue of findability.
Defining the Problem
In what ways was findability a major issue for the Lowe’s website?
Users showed it in several ways:
- They complained about the excessive scrolling to find the page they needed
- They were frustrated with the promos/ads scattered throughout the page, as it took up space and caused distraction while they were searching for what they needed to find
- They expressed their lack of trust in Lowe’s as a credible retailer because of how hard it was to find things on their website
To move on with the process, I needed to define the problem statement, so as to have a point of focus as I started designing. This is what I defined:
— As one of the largest and most recognizable home improvement retailers across North America, Lowe’s offers an extensive catalogue of products.
How might we empower our users to quickly navigate our large scale website and easily find the perfect product for their needs? —
Ideation and Development
Through heuristics analysis, competitive research, usability testing, and more, I pinpointed several things I wanted to execute in the redesign of the Lowe’s website:
- Color-blocking content for stronger visual distinction between categories
- Engaging visual spaces above-the-fold for the most important content
- Bolder font for an aesthetic refresh to draw attention
- Condensing content to save space while allowing for a simpler hierarchy and to promote a more seamless journey to the desired product
In fewer words, I wanted to restructure the content of pages with a clearer visual hierarchy.
User Testing the Prototype
Here is the final prototype — although “final”, it’s never a finished product. This is just where it currently lies. I’ll further go into next steps and what I want to look into more.
I conducted two rounds of usability testing to see how my research-to-design actually translated to users.
Seeing as I wanted to narrow my focus in on “findability”, I decided to revise my scenario and task.
Scenario: Your parents are moving into a new home next week. Your mom needs your help ordering a dishwasher she’s been eyeing for some time.
Task: Without using the search bar, find the $629.99 built-in dishwasher by BOSCH
A few things that came out of testing:
- I chose one happy path to enable in the prototype for users on their journey to dishwashers — this being the route of going to the navigation bar and clicking into “Appliances”. However, half of the users seemed to expect “Kitchen” to also be an enabled category in the prototype. Currently, when you click “Kitchen” you have to scroll all the way down to click “Appliances”… which redirects you back to the general “Appliances” page. This page is not kitchen appliances exclusive, but includes floor care and clothing care appliances. I decided to design the navigation bar so that “Appliances” and “Kitchen” would both take you to “Kitchen Appliances” in a parallel manner to promote consistency.
2. When asking users about the hierarchy of the “Dishwashers page”, most users seemed content with what the categories were and the order they were in. However, one user did feel that “Resources for You” could go below “Related Categories”. In order to validate this, I asked again in the following round of tests what users thought of the hierarchy. Again, another user believed that “Resources for You” should go at the bottom of the page, since that is what he expects from websites. It will be important to get this hierarchy down to the user’s satisfaction, so as to create a template across all the product pages and allow for consistency
What did users think of this redesign?
“Sometimes it’s really intimidating, especially for a woman, but this makes it super easy.”
“I felt good about it. I thought the navigation was easy, particularly felt like the sequence was very logical. From appliances it took me to kitchen, and still giving with words, it was much easier to find it, versus taking you to another page, and relying on pictures. I was able to have confidence that I was on the right track.”
“I’d be more open to looking at dishwashers on a website like this, because it’s easier to find. I don’t have to go through a bunch of pages and search through all the pages.”
“I feel like it takes something intimidating like Home Improvement and makes it simple for everyone to understand and find what they’re looking for.”
“I like that there are all these pictures in different shapes and sizes so it tells me what’s important to look at so I don’t get very overwhelmed at the content.”
In essence…
It seemed that the users I had tested felt more confident and well-equipped to navigate the redesigned website. I initially hit a mental roadblock with this project in that I wasn’t confident in how I could validate visual design decisions. However, I believe giving the users context as to where the website currently is, gauging their feelings & emotions about their experience on it, and then giving them a parallel testing experience in the new website was an effective way to grasp the user’s heart towards the redesign.
