The stakeholder goals

After scoping the work, I talked to our stakeholder to get a better sense of what their goals were as a company. BIR expressed that:

• They wanted their website to be an intuitive and usable experience

• They wanted to raise their conversion rate

• They wanted users to have an immediate sense of what BIR sold when they loaded the website

With this in mind my team began researching

Who are the users?

After speaking with the stakeholder and approaching the BIR website in a know/don’t know/assume approach, the primary and secondary users were established:

• Self-purchasers: The goal of these primary users is to simplify the baking process by removing the recipe searching, grocery purchasing, and ingredient measuring required of traditional baking.

• Gift givers: The goal of this secondary user is to give a unique gift that doesn’t require a lot of extra work to enjoy.

• Corporate gift-givers: The goal of this secondary user is to find a unique and accessible gift that is appealing to a broad audience.

Let’s bake!

Through a cognitive walkthrough and fly-on-the-wall observations I walked through the process of baking cookies using the BIR kit and took notes through the process. In separate sessions, three other participants baked cookies using the kits without the assistance of the design team. The participants found that the kits were fun and easy to understand and the instructions were clear.

Deep-dive research

To gain a better understanding of the content and structure of the BIR website, a content audit was performed and created into an information architecture diagram. The IA diagram revealed a complicated website structure with a lot of redundancy.

I completed a social media audit on all BIR accounts to find touchpoint strategy opportunities and successes. I found that there are consistent marketing messages across all social media platforms and the BIR website. There is also consistency in posts and frequent post interactions.

Essential usability tasks were identified for the BIR website along with the website of a more established competitor, Baketivity, and using Jakob’s Ten Usability Heuristics from the Nielsen Norman Group, tested against specific criteria to determine their viability. The major takeaways from this Heuristic Evaluation were:

• The checkout process is straightforward and matches a user’s expectations. 

• Unfilled, required fields are highlighted when an error has occurred. 

• Throughout the website, there are no clear indicators, such as section headers, breadcrumbs, or consistent navigation menu changes, letting a user know what section they’re on

• It is difficult to click on the right area of a shop page image to get to a product page, and if a user navigates away from that, it can be hard to get back.

• The product page contains shipping information between the price and the “Add to Cart” button, which is an area a user would expect product information. 

• The homepage and product pages are noisy and overwhelming.

• Shipping information is confusing with no option to ship the product right away.

Six competitor websites were analyzed to verify how BIR’s website compared in terms of functionalities and product offerings. This comparative analysis showed:

• 4 of 6 sites allowed for product customization

• 3 of 6 sites had easy to find information on bulk purchasing

• 1 of 6 sites offered both one time purchases and a subscription service

Interviews

Five participants that fit into our primary and secondary user groups were selected to talk about experiences with products similar to BIR. Participants were first asked to talk about a common family tradition. Participants were then asked to talk about their experience with convenience services such as meal kits and subscription boxes. The directed storytelling interviews gleaned:

• 4 of 5 participants stated promo codes were a major way they discovered the meal kit service

• Participants enjoyed receiving things in the mail and discovering new recipes through the meal kits

• Participants did experience some stress with the logistics of arranging for delivers and making sure produce stays fresh

Six participants were selected to test the website in its current state. Three participants were considered self-purchasers/personal gift givers and three participants were business gifters. Participants were first asked to give general impressions of the homepage. Participants were then asked to complete 3-4 tasks and 2-3 scenarios on the website. Questions differed based on the type of purchaser. Lastly, participants were asked to rate their feelings about their experience. From these usability tests  we learned:

• 6 of 6 participants understood BIR’s purpose right away 

• 4 of 6 participants felt their first click to the shopping page did not meet their expectations because of the quantity of items in the shop

• 3 of 3 business gifters were not able to find information on bulk ordering

• 4 of 6 participants were not able to find information on Virtual Baking Parties