Remaining Competitive Amidst Online and Corporate Retailers
A Case Study on Kensington Market
A project by Karen Vuong, Jimmy Foulds, and Kathy Li.
Overview
Kensington Market is a mixed commercial-residential neighbourhood in Toronto that is known for its collection of local businesses, open-air marketplace, and vibrant murals. There are over 240 businesses that range from fresh produce, restaurants, bars, vintage clothing, electronics, specialty items, and much more.
The Challenge
The Way Consumers Shop is Changing
The reality is there has been a shift in the way we shop — our purchases are increasingly being made online. Although there is growing trend in buying local, independent retailers at Kensington Market can no longer compete with large corporate retailers due to their lack of online presence.
Our overall objective was to create an online platform for Kensington Market that complements the offline shopping experience for visitors.
In order to accomplish our goal, we focused on:
- Creating a customized experience for individual shoppers
- Increasing sales of local BIA boutique shops
- Increasing community engagement
- Increasing social media presence
Research
Walking in the Shoes of Vendors and Visitors
For this project, we collected research data through in-person interviews at the market as well as online surveys.
Insights from Visitors:
- 75% (12) were returning visitors; 25% (4) were first-time visitors
- 75% heard about the Market through word-of-mouth
- Mainly went for restaurants, bars, cafes, and sightseeing
- Tourists valued the unique and eclectic offerings
- Tourists had difficulty navigating through the market without a map
- Locals valued the location, ambience, and Pedestrian Sundays
- Locals concerned that the market was slowly becoming too corporate
Insights from Vendors:
- 75% (3) were local shop-owners; 25% (1) was a corporate retailer
- Vendors have been operating between 8 months to 12 years
- Business is at its peak in summer, and slow in winter
- All businesses have their own Instagram profiles; most had their own website
- Businesses were not aware of Kensington website
Competitor & Competitive Analysis
We compared Kensington Market against several direct competitors that included both domestic and international markets. We also looked to some indirect competitors which also offered a diversified shopping experience to understand effective methods in building online interactive maps.
It was apparent that none of the markets offered any sort of personalized experience or recommendations currently — adding this feature would give Kensington a competitive advantage. The Kensington site also lacked social media integration, vendor highlights, and community engagement in comparison to its peers.
Affinity Diagrams
We created an affinity diagram to analyze the responses to our open-ended questions. We combined the responses from both visitors and vendors to understand their shared motivations and frustrations.
Both vendors and visitors alike really appreciate the rich culture and vibrant community. The design implication as a result of our ‘Culture’ cluster was to not make the website too ‘corporate’ and this would apply to the UI designs in later stages too.
We distilled two distinct vendor profiles from the diagram — the status quo vendor who has been operating for 10+ years and doesn’t have time or energy for marketing. The second profile is the ambitious vendor who wants to increase online presence, but doesn’t have the tools or knowledge to do so.
Planning
Perspective is Everything
With the information we acquired during research phase, three distinct user personas started to form.
Meet Sara. She is a teacher from Seattle who travelled to Toronto for the very first time to visit some old friends from university. She is staying with a friend who recommended she go check out Kensington Market.
Let me introduce Jacob. He is a Marketing Co-ordinator who has lived in the Kensington Market neighbourhood for three years. Jacob and his wife have recently welcomed a newborn girl into their family.
Last but not least, meet James. He owns a Thai restaurant in Kensington Market for more than 10 years. James is a passionate and busy chef that just doesn't have time for marketing. He would like to increase the online presence of his restaurant, but with minimal effort.
Site Map
The site map we built had a very simple and flat structure. There are 5 main sections in the top level navigation, with two planned pop-ups that appear during vendor login and when users scroll down to “Your Kensington Experience” on the homepage.
Design
Re-inventing the Online Kensington Experience
All members of the team sketched out the main web pages (homepage, vendor details, and personal recommendations). We had all agreed on the basic layout during the affinity diagram phase of what the main pages would look like before setting out to sketch our own versions.
We challenged the design rationale of the features we chose on the low-fidelity sketches. We took the best ideas, combined them, and created our mid-fidelity wireframes in Sketch.
Mid-fidelity Wireframes (v1)
The essential first step was coming up with a Design Library of the headers, fonts, symbols, and buttons we were going to use. Once we decided on these key elements, we went off and started creating wireframes for all the pages in the site map. We kept the design simple, clean, with generous spacing to provide an effortless user experience.
Usability Testing
Conducting usability testing revealed some insightful findings. In general, users felt that the v1 prototype was quite easy to navigate and intuitive due to the simple site map structure. However, some testing tasks brought to light issues and gave us a chance to improve our design.
Scenario #1: You are a tourist from out of town and thinking about visiting Kensington Market for the very first time.
Task: Read the FAQs.
Findings: Users typically expect to access the FAQs on the footer of the website. It wasn’t intuitive to some users that the FAQs were included as part of the ‘About Us’ page.
Solution: We added a link to FAQs in the footer. To give users a preview of the different sections of the ‘About Us’ page and other main sections, we added drop-down menus when users clicked on the top level navigation buttons.
Scenario #2: You are a local residing in Kensington Market and getting tired of going to the same places every week. You want to discover new places and events.
Task A: Add preferences to get a list of personal recommendations.
Findings: Users were unsure where to go to add their preferences, and would browse the website until stumbling upon the feature.
Solution: We created a pop-up that would appear when users scrolled below the fold on the homepage. If users were interested in inputting their personal preferences, they could select categories of interest. It would then bring them to a personal recommendations page based on selected areas of interest.
Task B: Search for a listing of all coffee shops at the Market.
Findings: Users found that Directory and Market Map were essentially the same, and the website didn’t need to have two pages with the same purpose.
Solution: To further simplify navigation, we collapsed Directory, Market Map, and Getting Here into one section called ‘Directions’. When the user clicks on ‘Directions’ in top level navigation, a drop-down menu will appear.
Scenario #3: You are a vendor at Kensington Market and heard that the new Kensington website allows vendors to submit profiles as a means of marketing your business online.
Task: Input basic business information and upload vendor profile.
Findings: Users found some aspects of the forms confusing such as what type of picture they should be uploading and what the social media fields required.
Solution: We added additional instructions in the form and also provided an example in the social media profile link fields.
Final Prototype
After addressing some of the main issues or pain points from user testing, we were able to bring our design to the final prototype. Due to time constraints, we were not able to test the second and final prototype. It would be prudent to conduct additional testing and increase the number of users.
Conclusion
Kensington Market is truly a unique community that highlights the diversity of Toronto. The charm is in the actual in-person experience, and an e-commerce site would simply lose sight of that. Therefore, our website’s master feature is to create customized experiences for new and returning visitors to make the offline shopping experience that much more effortless and enjoyable.
Local independent retailers will have a platform to market their business with minimal effort by simply creating a vendor profile. The site has spotlights on vendor stories, creates awareness for new businesses, and promotes local independent and corporate retailers equally. The new Kensington website is well-integrated with social media and creates a stronger sense of community engagement.
Sara is able to successfully navigate through the market by loading the Market Map on her phone. Jacob and his family goes on the website at least once a week as they are on a quest to discover and see everything Kensington has to offer. James’ restaurant welcomes more foot traffic due to his appealing vendor profile and social media presence.
