HABITAT GOODS

User research and UX/UI E-commerce website redesign case study for a local home goods store
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PROJECT OVERVIEW
For my second individual project in General Assembly, I was tasked to redesign the e-commerce website for Habitat Goods. Since it was an individual project, I had to play the roles of a project manager, UX researcher, and UI designer. It was a full fledge project that started with user research and ended with a prototype, which was further iterated after the usability test.

People:
‍Individual project

Skills:
‍User research, Competitive & Comparative analysis, Personas creation, Prototyping, Usability test

Duration:
‍4 weeks
(October 2022)

ABOUT HABITAT GOODS
Habitat Goods has been a Singapore neighborhood home goods store since 2019. However, due to the pandemic, there was a shift in consumer shopping habits from brick-and-mortar shops to online e-commerce. As such, Habitat Goods saw this opportunity to allow their customers to purchase the products online through the B2C e-commerce platform, Shopee.
Current Habitat Goods E-commerce shop on Shopee
THE PROBLEM
While Shopee provided Habitat Goods with a large user base and logistics support, hosting on the platform inevitably led to a lack of personalization and brand differentiation.

Insights from my user research also show that users want timely response and help from the sellers and a more personalized shopping experience online. Results from the open card sort exercise that I did also revealed that the products can be better sorted into categories that are intuitive to users.
THE SOLUTION
Hence, I wanted to design the stand-alone e-commerce website to give Habitat Goods a distinctive visual identity and to better showcase the highly curated inventory while maintaining its brand image: a “small shop” appeal and great customer service.
1. Uncle Robert AI Chat-Bot
Any questions? Just Ask Uncle Robert!
‍He will be the customers' own virtual shop assistant, providing immediate answers to customers' queries, product recommendations and personalized sales alert!
2. Personalized Sales Alert
Annoyed by irrelevant marketing emails? Set up your own sales alert!
‍Customers will only receive sales alert for products that they are interested in!
3. Online Catalogue & Product Colour Filter
Browse and choose products based on your home décor style!
Better visualization of the products with the addition of an online catalogue!

Process Overview

Design Process
The design process was based on the double diamond theory, including the key phases of discovery, definition, development, and delivery. It was an iterative process of exploring ideas then taking focused action, and then back to the explorative stage again.
User Research
Discovering what is the problem
I conducted 6 user interviews to understand the users’ online shopping habits, focusing on their needs and struggles when purchasing home goods products online. Questions about their physical shopping experience on home goods products were also asked to compare the two and further match their needs. Affinity mapping was then done to consolidate answers and for further analysis.

Some of the main insights gathered were:‍‍
"I dislike that online shops take longer time to answer my queries as compared to physical shops."
"I make online purchases based on other customers' reviews."
"I like to browse around the showrooms at physical home goods stores."
Competitive Analysis
Discovering what is the problem
The competitive analysis was done to assess the current offerings of other home goods and furniture e-commerce websites to understand their pros and cons.

Fortytwo

“At FortyTwo, we tasked ourselves to provide the best online shopping experience ever for your furniture needs.”

Cons (-)

Pros (+)

No automatic help chat-bots and customers will have to call or email
User reviews and star ratings are provided. There is also a quality score by Fortytwo’s own unbiased review.
Decision paralysis - overwhelming categories at the secondary navigation
Numerous pictures of products from different angles
Able to shop by look i.e “minimalist”, “industrial”
Clear indication of products that are on sales
Able to quick view product for more details without navigating into new page

IUIGA

“At IUIGA, we bring premium quality everyday goods to you at completely transparent prices.”

Cons (-)

Pros (+)

No automatic help chat-bots and customers will have to email after operating hours
Colour palette & typography exudes premium and gives impression of high quality
Landing page over saturated with too many products with not very clear segregation of different categories
Clear navigation bar and categorization
Visually attractive and high quality images
No filter options for product page
No sales section for customers looking for on sale products
Comparative Analysis
Discovering what is the problem
Based on user research and the above competitive analysis, the chatbot is one of the common features that could be improved on. Thus, comparative analysis was done on other websites that offer the best virtual assistance via their website chatbots.

Singtel

“Ask Shirley” virtual assistance
  • Virtual assistant with a name for more friendly vibe
  • Customers are able to choose from a list of FAQ topics
  • Customers are able to type in their own question

DBS

DBS digibot chat-bot
‍
  • Clean and simple with hamburger menu for customers to view all the available topics
  • Horizontal scrolling enabled so that they can provide more information without information overloading
Synthesizing Research Results
Defining and prioritizing the problem with the most impact
With the research results, I identified a few possible opportunities that Habitat Goods can seize to help it stand out from its competitors.
  • Provide an automatic AI chat-bot to provide timely responses to customer queries and increase customer engagement
  • A simpler secondary navigation as compared to its competitors to reduce decision paralysis
  • Less product cluttering on landing page to emphasize their highly curated inventory
For the comparative analysis, both DBS and Singtel have very sleek and effective AI chat-bots. However, I feel that Singtel "Ask Shirley" chat-bot will be a better option for Habitat Goods to adopt as it exudes a sense of familiarity and friendliness which is on-brand for Habitat Goods.
Personas
Defining and prioritizing the problem with the most impact
Using the results from the user interviews, I created two personas to represent the target audience of the e-commerce website.

The personas are representative of the two main target groups:
    • June, the habitual online shopper who loves online shopping but wants better assurance
    • Brandon, the one that has a greater need for home goods products but requires push factors to switch to online shopping.
    The solution should be able to increase brand loyalty for June and persuade Brandon to purchase the products online. The problem statements that the solution should try to solve:
    ‍
    June needs a way to get accurate and personalized information about the products to be confident in making her purchase as currently, the product information provided on the website is insufficient.
    • HMW provide Brandon with a showroom experience for online home goods store?
    • HMW allow Brandon to chose home goods products that are similar in design style?
    • HMW allow give Brandon personalized recommendations to help with his purchase?
    • HMW improve the customer service for June who requires fast reply?
    • HMW personalize the sales alert function for June and only send sales alert for products she is interested in ?

    ‍Brandon needs a way to purchase different products of similar design themes so that the products will be coherent in style and fit the current interior design of his home as currently the products are only categorized by their functions and not design.

    Style Guide
    Developing prototype
    Typography: Roboto and Schoolbell was chosen as the main fonts of the website to portray Habitat Goods’ brand image of a friendly neighborhood store.
    Colour: Warm and vibrant colour tone was chosen as the accent colour for a more friendly and inviting feel to the website. Colour palette was also decided to suit the colour of the brand’s logo.
    Solution (1)
    "Uncle Robert" AI Chat-bot
    Developing solutions to solve the problems
    Based on the user research done and existing consumer statistics, customers highly value personalized customer service responses in a timely manner. A survey done by Khoros (2019) found that when making a purchase, 83% of customers cited good customer service as their most important criterion for deciding what to buy.
    • The name “Uncle Robert” for familiarity and a friendly vibe similar to a shop owner of a neighborhood home goods store
    • The linguistic style will be conversational with a formal yet friendly tone
    • Built-in product recommendation quiz to to provide personalized recommendations to customers
    The proposed AI chat-bot will be programmed to provide immediate answers to FAQs automatically so that customers can receive an immediate response to speed up the decision making process. The following are a few additional characteristics of the chat-bot:
    Solution (2)
    Personalized Sales Alert
    Developing solutions to solve the problems
    From my user research, I found that customers like to shop online because of frequent sales and promotions. They are usually more reluctant to purchase if the online prices are higher than retail prices. Also, a survey done by Accenture shows that 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them.

    This personalized sales alert function allows customers to set notifications that will alert them of the price drop for a certain product that they are interested in. This also ensures that customers are not getting spam by sales alerts that are irrelevant.
    Solution (3)
    Online Catalogue and Product Colour Filter
    Developing solutions to solve the problems
    To further help customers in their purchase, the product colour filter will allow customers to browse products by their colour so that they can purchase items that fit their home’s colour scheme and interior design. The addition of an online catalogue will provide an online showroom experience for better visualization.
    Usability Test
    Developing the prototype and testing its functionality with users
    During the usability tests, I gave the users several tasks to test out the functionality of the website. While users commented that the website is clean and easy to navigate, below are a few issues that were pointed out that can be further improved:
    • Unclear features - Users had difficulty trying to set up sales alert for a product as they did not know that they have to favourite a product before they are able to do so
    • Lack of dual-view for online catalogue - Although users like the online catalogue page, they commented that it will be good if they can choose to view the products as a list, aside from the current image view
    Iteration
    Implementing the changes
    Based on the usability tests insights, I made a few adjustments to improve the prototype.
    Before
    Alert can be set only after adding product to favourite.
    After
    A separate button is used for notifications to allow user to directly set sales alert instead of having to favourite the product first
    Before
    Image-only view
    After
    Product list option to allow customers to view all products at once and allow navigation to their category page i.e plates, cookware
    Reflection
    What went well and what can be improved
    I am glad I decided to challenge myself for this case study, experimenting with more playful colors to suit the brand image and help with brand differentiation.

    However, further touch up can be made to the UI to make it more consistent and sleek. With more time, research can also be done to add in augmented reality element for the online catalogue feature to allow even better visualization of products.

    I could also have included a negative pathway solution for the scenario that:
    • The automated reply by the chat-bot did not provide the user with the answer they wanted
    • The questions asked cannot be answered by the AI chat-bot
    All in all, it was exciting trying to design an e-commerce web for a more personalized shopping experience and to try and differentiate it from its competitors.
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    Contact me at
    xiuhui0@hotmail.com