UX designer’s role in business strategy_ Responsive Web Redesign
A case study of a healthy food delivery company
Background of the case
Epicured is a healthy meal delivery company, focusing on low Fodmap diet for the patients who have digestion problems. For a while ago, my team and I had the chance to work for Epicured to help them redesign their website since users are confused about their meal subscription plan and complained about the whole order system of the website. In this case we interviewed some customers and investors of Epicured and successfully identify the problems and deliver our design solution to our client, including the restructure of the global navigation bar and the simplification of the subscription system .
UX Designer’s role
However, what I want to share in this article is about what kind of role UX designers can play in the whole business plan. Should a UX designer advise solutions involved change of business i.e. change the demographics of target users, reposition the core value of the company, change of products and so on? Or UX designer should just focus on the user experience and interface of “website”?
UX tools should be implemented in the initials steps of starting a business
Most of the companies tend to hire UX/UI designers when they almost have all business model confirmed, including target users, products and value proposition. I used to be an entrepreneur couple years ago. My partners and I also adopted the similar business strategy. We had a thorough business plan, including wonderful products, target users and value proposition. Well….at least we thought it’s a thorough plan and we believe our products would hit the market. We didn’t hire UX designers to provide their insights while we make the business plan. Nor did we implement the UX tools during the business decision making. Instead of really understanding our users, we assumed who our target users are and what our target users like. As you can imagine, my business failed in the end.
I think UX designer should participate in the first beginning when the business starts. After the business run for a while, the UX tools i.e. user interview should repetitively apply to make sure business is constantly in line with users’ needs.
“Design” Solutions to Epicured
Epicured came to us with the following information and goal:
- target user: 35 - 55 females, married
- value proposition: Low-FODMAP diet and gluten-free meals
- Redesign the desktop version of the website since most of their target users won’t use mobile app to order food delivery
We did the user interviews, competitors analysis, heuristic analysis and studied Google Analytic reports to re-identify the persona, problem statement and persona’s journey map. We also applied tools such as affinity map, MosCow method and design studios to decide features of prototypes and design wireframes. During the user research, I found out that age and gender of target users are different from our client expects.
User Demographics: Age
Our client told us their target users are 35–55 femal. However, we found out google analytics shows the different story from what our client told us. According to google analytics, 25–34 year olds are the single largest user group, bringing in 58% of revenue for Epicured. 25–44 is the age range of Epicured’s primary user, representing 60.15% of users. This age group brings in 75.6% of Epicured’s Revenue.
User Demographics: Gender
Only one-third of the users are male. However, male users spend nearly the same amount as female users.
User Behavior: Mobile phone first
According to Google analytics, 40.47% of the users visited the site via a mobile phone. However, they rarely made purchases due to the bad design of mobile app. Besides, all the users in our user interview also proclaimed that they had the needs to order the food via mobile app.
Value proposition: low-Fodmap diet only?
Our client came to us with the core value of specializing in low-FODMAP meal delivery. However, their CEO and investor had the concern about this value and asked the insights we got from the user research. They are not sure whether they should only focus on low-FODMAP meal or they should provide different types of healthy foods. According to our user interviews, no users have stomach digestion problems. (Only one user’s husband has the digestion problem.) They order from this website to have healthy food. However, we were not able to conduct quantity research this time. There is not enough data to support whether to re-proposition the core value of the company.
Subscription pricing Model: business call?
Our client’s subscription pricing model is based on the meals customers order. The same meals will automatically generate for the following 4 weeks. Users can skip, edit or cancel the delivery of the meals. However, the whole subscription plan is confusing for most of the users. While we did the competitors analysis, we found out the pricing model for most of the competitors is by subscription plan i.e. 3 meals for 50 dollars and 7meals for 100 dollars, instead of by meals. It’s clearer and simpler for users to understand how much they need to pay in the very first beginning of their order procedure. However, we think it’s a business call and we also don’t have enough time to propose an appropriate pricing model due to this project time frame.
However, I believe the whole user experience will be simplified and improved if UX designers are also entitled to participate from the initial business decision making, including the pricing model. After all, what UX designers learn is User-Centered Design. A business will be successful only when you can deliver the product/service based on what users need.
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