eCommerce website revamp
In the post-epidemic era, contactless business opportunities and stay-at-home economy are thriving; it has boosted e-commerce’s business performance. Under the outbreak of stay-at-home economy, business performance of e-commerce has grown rapidly. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the epidemic has caused people's consumption habits to shifting from physical to online purchases. The proportion of the overall retail industry in the first 11 months of last year has risen to 7.2%, and the market size is gradually approaching that of general merchandise. With the change of consumers' consumption habit and more e-commerce competitors are participating in this market, X e-commerce, one of the leading e-commerce companies in Taiwan, has also started a serial of plans to change. In addition to focusing on developing the commercial plan, X e-commerce also hopes to provide users with a better shopping experience and inspire users’ buying inclination through using the website. We strive to meet this challenge through various innovations in business strategy and digital experience, because X E-Commerce believes that apart from price and logistics speed, shopping experience is also one of the crucial elements that can affect the overall situation.
Project Challenge
No revisions on website over the years
The website of E-commerce X has not been revised for many years. In fact, E-commerce X has tried to having revision on their websites in the past; however the revised design was taken off within a few days after it was launched. Because the revenue and page view traffic of E-commerce X dropped significantly after the new version of website was launched, with this experience, E-commerce X dared not make a major revision on their website. E-commerce X believes that users have already established a certain conceptual model under the old websites, and the old version design is the most reassuring for users. So the challenges of this project is how we can use the user's existing conceptual model and their browsing habits to seek breakthroughs from the old design and create a new version of the design that can be more easily accepted and learned by users.
What does X e-commerce care about?
In my past business development experiences, the brief provided by the client has only the most basic questions and needs. From the brief, we feel that e-commerce X thinks that the most basic UI update can solve the problems they have, because they want to proceed this revision in a more conservative way. However, we believe that in this topic, more services can be provided through a more comprehensive UX design. Therefore, one of our challenges is to find opportunities without too much business logic provided by e-commerce X, and we focus on optimization of the user experiences and business layout of e-commerce X, in order to accurately grab the pain point of this topic and increase our chances to bid this case.
Design Process
From different experience designs, imagine how to make browsing and shopping are with more feasibility?
What client wants their new website to present is to make browsing and shopping is with more feasibility, so we need to find out how to achieve these two goals first. Apart from our analysis of competing products on other e-commerce platforms, we also refer to the space design method of shopping malls. As we realize that shopping malls also take into account the two elements of easier browsing and easier shopping when designing traffic flow, there should be many ideas and theories for our reference.
A good shopping traffic flow has three conditions: effectively enhance the visibility of stores; effectively enhance the accessibility of stores; and have obvious memory points. We refer to one of the department store's traffic flow’s design- "Barbell Strategy", it arranges the main stores which are more attractive to consumers at both ends of the aisle, while consumers are moving in between, the circulation of traffic flow can be created, so that other stores located in between can be seen as well. We consider that this concept can be applied to designing the browsing traffic flow for e-commerce users. By connecting blocks which can attract users' attention, we can create effective traffic flow, so that the products and activities which e-commerce X wants to promote can be laid out in between to increase the chance of its exposure and improve the conversion rate of the product.
We define the functional blocks in the current website (such as my account, order details, tracking list), pop-up blocks (limited-time offers), and product categories as the blocks that can most attract users' attention. Because these functions are most used by the users or easily be seen while browsing the website, we re-arrange the location of functional blocks to expand the browsing flow, maximize the browsing space, and create more space in each browsing flow. Therefore, to enhance espouse opportunities for promotions and products, so that users can browse promotions and different products more effectively.
A good shopping traffic flow has three conditions: effectively enhance the visibility of stores; effectively enhance the accessibility of stores; and have obvious memory points. We refer to one of the department store's traffic flow’s design- "Barbell Strategy", it arranges the main stores which are more attractive to consumers at both ends of the aisle, while consumers are moving in between, the circulation of traffic flow can be created, so that other stores located in between can be seen as well. We consider that this concept can be applied to designing the browsing traffic flow for e-commerce users. By connecting blocks which can attract users' attention, we can create effective traffic flow, so that the products and activities which e-commerce X wants to promote can be laid out in between to increase the chance of its exposure and improve the conversion rate of the product.
We define the functional blocks in the current website (such as my account, order details, tracking list), pop-up blocks (limited-time offers), and product categories as the blocks that can most attract users' attention. Because these functions are most used by the users or easily be seen while browsing the website, we re-arrange the location of functional blocks to expand the browsing flow, maximize the browsing space, and create more space in each browsing flow. Therefore, to enhance espouse opportunities for promotions and products, so that users can browse promotions and different products more effectively.
Motivate users to scroll down to explore
In addition to maximizing the browsing space on the first screen by expanding browsing traffic flow; meanwhile, we control the nodes of each screen to guide users to scroll down the page to explore more, so that the entire home page can be laid out and not only on the first screen, butt also more active promotion blocks, to improve the entire browsing space.
Take a Way
What is the real problem behind the scene
Brief can only provide limited clues. Problems are not mentioned in the brief, do not mean there is nothing need to be solved, sometimes it is because client did not think the problems can be solved through UX design. What we need to do is to disassemble the business strategy and business logic of the entire product, to have a comprehensive understanding of core issues, and even to think over the problems which our client has, so as to build up a more solid UX solution. Because UX can not only bring users a better experience, but also can help different business strategies to be more effectively presented in products, UX needs to understand users, but users are not just consumers who are using the products, clients who operate their business through products are also our UX users.
Logic of experiences in different applications; refer to applications which have solid design theories
In the design of different applications, although the forms of expressions and purposes are different, there is a commonality which is to provide users with a better experience (a good painting can make the room more stylish, and a good product can help you solve the problem faster). This proposal has applied the design of traffic flow in the shopping center to the entire UX design, so that the digital experience design, which has less design history, can also apply the solid design theory, and establish more convincing logic and theory for the entire design. In future design, we can also refer to the experience design of different applications and the service of the entire digital service can be broader and more profound.
