2022, 2 Weeks
User Interviews, Card Sort, Information Architecture, User Flows, Sketching, Prototyping, A/B Testing
Pet Stop | Concept
Solo Project, all work here is my own
Through research and design, I created an e-commerce site for a local pet shop in London, the solution was a platform that encompasses the community feel of the Pet Stop through various services and features.
Plus a simple & intuitive check out flow to ensure efficient and timely purchases for customers.
Define and design a new website for a local pet shop in London, to increase conversion rate. Whilst also keeping the community feel of a local shop.
Users held strong opinions when it came to their pets and how they care for them! 2 strong voices were appearing from the start..
All 6 of my interviewees owned pets, whether they be dogs or rabbits, and they all had clear shopping habits when it comes to pet care...I think these opposing views are nicely summed up in the two quotes below:
"I enjoy going to my local independent store, it is always a pleasant experience"
vs
"I don't have time to be going to the shops and picking up stuff, you can just do it on amazon"
So, 2 personas would be needed....However there was one stronger than the other, so I have focused on this persona for my sprint. Other research findings included?
Customers tend to repeat purchase products that their pets like, to avoid unnecessary spending.
Pet owners tend to get most of their advice for how to care for their pets from google and online reviews, or their vet.
They find independent pet shops expensive compared to online/supermarket deals.
It was clear from my interviews that there would be 2 personas, their main defining differences being...
Time poor vs time wealthy
Buys pet supplies online vs buys pet supplies in their local shop
Below is my primary persona, Laura. I won't go into detail about my secondary persona Sandra, as she was not the focus for this sprint, but it is important to know she exists!
"Laura needs advice to help her buy reasonably priced pet supplies efficiently, so she can ensure she is taking the best care of her pets"
The huge breadth of inventory that the store had made the Information Architecture more of a complex problem to solve
Through my competitive analysis, I concluded that most websites group products by animal type, with the secondary nav being product type categories.
To test this, I conducted an open card sort via optimal sort. The findings showed that majority of users followed this method of grouping by animal type.
To further test this, I then conducted a semi-open card sort by giving some animal categories, but leaving ambiguous products without a set category.
This highlighted the need for further segmentation of smaller animal categories like reptiles.
Focusing on my problem statement, my user flow follows the entire customer journey, from first landing on the website to completing checkout.
Referring back to the brief, I tried to keep the flow as short as possible, to avoid customers dropping off. A short and succinct customer journey would ensure more successful purchases.
Keeping the flow simple and signalling to the user where they were in the checkout process was crucial to ensure customers converted into sales.
My initial sketches focused on a simple homepage where users could access the different animal shopping options easily.
This was followed by the product page, which needed to clearly display the products & include filters to help customers navigate to the correct item faster.
Finally, the checkout flow - this had to be iterated to ensure I was left with a concise flow. I think my sketch with lots of arrows speaks for itself!
To bring the Pet Stop brand to life, I pulled together a visual identity for the brand.
The colours chosen are paired back & neutral, to allow for the products themselves to be seen. As the inventory was quite busy, this would help to not overwhelm the user.
There were a few minor tweaks needed to make the flow easier for users to follow...
Firstly, users found the checkout summary to the right of the screen to be slightly confusing – it didn’t update with the users preferences as they navigated through the flow. This was an easy fix and one that would again encourage users to not drop off.
Secondly, I ran some accessibility checks to ensure that all text is legible on each background, as some was difficult to read. I did implement a quick fix of this on the home page as shown below, adding a coloured banner to all main images.
Finally, the supplementary nav needs building out, perhaps include a find us button, social logos and a sign up bar for the Pet Stop newsletter.
Ensure customers complete purchases
I did this in 2 ways:
1. Ensuring the checkout flow remained efficient and succinct with few steps to complete a purchase
2. Inclusion of scubscription model so that customers wouldn't need to purchase each month & instead the process was automated.
Keep the community feel
I did this in 3 ways:
1. Addition of other features, not just product buying, but a place to get advice and find other services in the local neighbourhood
2. Addition of community section, where customers can enter questions and receive feedback from other local pet owners
3. Enable click & collect at checkout to ensure the shop was kept at the forefront of users minds.
Challenges with the huge inventory!
Going into this, my main hesitation was about the breadth of the inventory that the Pet Stop had and how to make this as streamlined and easy to navigate as possible.
But I found conducting a card sort to be a really effective tool for establishing what users thought of as the most useful way of organising these items.
This also coupled with my competitive research really cemented the navigation for me and made it clear that the right path was organising by animal type.
I enjoyed coming up with screen sketches and seeing these brought to life through the addition of branding, building my very basic design system was also a first and despite getting lost in a sea of potential colours, I really enjoyed choosing the right ones for the Pet Stop brand.
Please feel free to explore my work, or get in touch to have a chat!
