Tiny Humans Read
Role: UX Researcher
Summary
Tiny Humans Read is a local subscription-based business which caters to parents or those with children in their lives who want to foster a love of reading to a child they love. Their website is visually polished, and their customers write raving reviews about how much they love receiving these boxes in the mail with their surprise, age-specified books to explore with their children. Tiffany, the owner and operator of Tiny Humans Read, came to me looking for advice and recommendations for how to improve the conversion rate of the visitors to her site. She was looking for an understanding of her customer’s journey on her website, a heuristic evaluation of the site’s current potential issues, and a list of recommendations for how to improve.
Background
Tiffany and I kicked off our partnership by laying out a foundation for what she wanted to accomplish from my involvement. She came to me because she had created a Facebook ad that had great traction and a positive trajectory; however she noticed a drop in conversion between site visits and cart checkouts. She wanted to find out what the gap was causing those who came to her site not to complete the checkout process. We discussed understanding this through a map of the lifecycle of a customer visiting her site for the first time.
“I think the issue is with the checkout system. It’s not a great experience.”
- Business Owner
Scope
While discussing the scope of this research, we discussed what questions Tiffany had about her customers’ experience with a focus on the checkout process. She believed that the checkout application was the source of the issue she was seeking to verify. The questions we were seeking to answer were the following:
What are customers looking for when they come to the site?
What is the reasoning for the gaps in conversion rate?
What functionality are customers expecting on arrival to the website?
What usability gaps exist from ad to website to checkout?
In my report out to Tiffany, my handoff needed to include these to help her improve her customer experience:
Customer expectations
Customer pain points
Business opportunities
Constraints
We then discussed what constraints my final recommendations needed to work within. It was important for us to feel these suggestions could be practically implemented to show her results ASAP. The constraints we initially identified were as follows":
Checkout process cannot be altered and website design is limited to CMS being used
Needed to limit interaction with customers directly
Data to be gathered via selected customer segments who signed up to participate in email campaigns
Baseline Metrics
To understand how she wanted to grow, we discussed the current performance of her website, Facebook ad, and conversion rates.
She had been running her Facebook ad for 2 months
Her Facebook ad reached 23,000 users
Since starting the ad, she averaged 651 hits to her website
Of visitors to her website, 147 completed checkout process
Her current conversion rate was 2% (the industry average being 2-3%)
Success Metrics
We discussed what the project success metrics would be via deliverables and how Tiffany could observe if these changes she was making impacted her business positively. We discussed the time to observe would be 1 month prior to complete to subscription process to delivery of product.
Handoff Artifacts would include a Journey Map of the New Customer and a Heuristic Evaluation
Tiffany was looking for her conversion rate to increase to 3-5%
METHODOLOGy
With all of our foundations set, I decided to go about gathering research via surveys. We discussed the potential bias of this method, but it was the best compromise for the amount of interfacing permitted with customers and to cast a wide net of data. I was deeply curious about the checkout process to validate whether Tiffany’s assumptions were correct. We also asked retroactive questions about visitor’s first time viewing and using the site to see if any sentiments stood out to note, whether they completed their purchase or not. Our access was via her expansive email network, so that was another potential bias with the pool of users I was able to reach out to.
Conclusion
Tiffany began implementing changes to the highlighted issues and recommendations via the heuristic evaluation. The gif to the right demonstrates the updated flow of the user experience.
Testimonial
“I hired Brittany to do a complete UX assessment of my subscription box company, the website, the needs of my warm leads, and my customer’s journey. She went above and beyond from the very beginning. I was able to come away from the project with a comprehensive understanding of my customers, as well as an action plan for changes I could make to improve my website. My Facebook Ads conversions increased by 200%, and my organic traffic conversions increased by 2%!”