Identify Key Issues

I launched my research with a heuristic evaluation using Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics. I went through common tasks of an e-commerce website like purchasing flow to document encountered issues that violated the heuristics and usability qualities. The most crucial violations found were efficiency in the navigation and checkout flow of the site.

Understanding Competitors

It was important to look at other online alcohol sites and compare their features to Remedy Liquor’s. I created a competitive and comparative analysis with direct and indirect competitors’ e-commerce websites and compared their solutions to the features Remedy Liquor was missing.

Remedy Liquor fell short in offering users with working sort by and filter functions. This analysis also made it clear that Remedy liquor was offering features that other competitors were not. These extra features may serve as a distraction towards users being able to accomplish their goals on the site.

User Interviews

I conducted 3 user interviews with open-ended questions to better understand the user’s online shopping habits and needs, likes, and dislikes of those e-commerce experiences. The key questions I asked were:

1. What experience did they have shopping for items online?

2. What were their shopping habits and routines when doing so?

3. What features did they prefer and expect during these experiences?

4. How did those online experiences differ if they were shopping for alcohol specifically?

Additionally, with each interview, I conducted a task analysis where I assigned users the task of finding a particular product and purchasing it through the site. This gave me thorough insights into what users expect from an e-commerce website, as well as what their pain points were.

Affinity Mapping

After the interview process, I synthesized the data and defined patterns through affinity mapping. This process revealed common user insights, pain points, and expectations.

Meet Clive

A synthesis of my research findings led to the creation of a persona, Clive, who represents an ideal user for Remedy Liquor. I defined Clives’ scenario, pain points, and “how might we” statement to reference him through the process and keep my design decisions focused on the user.

Journey Mapping

I designed a customer journey map to document Clive’s experience as he purchases items from the website for the first time. This allowed me to visualize Clive’s feelings and pain points throughout his checkout experience with Remedy Liquor.

Ideate & Design

Feature Prioritization

I revisited the most severed heuristic violations and focused on the pain points in Clive’s journey map. Reinforcing the combined data, I was able to create a feature prioritization chart that would address the key issues.

Structuring the Site

Next, I analyzed the information architecture and determined which areas would benefit most from a reorganization.

I conducted 3 open card sorting tests to determine how users grouped alcohol categories and subcategories. What I found was that because Remedy Liquor’s content was so common, the main categories users grouped the content with were similar to those of the current Remedy Liquor’s site. User’s did not know the subcategories for different alcohol taxonomies if they were not presented with it first.

I determined that an effective information architecture might come from incorporating common categories and subcategories from those of other wine and liquor vendors since users would have familiarity with it.

The Pivot - Redesigning the IA

It was clear from the site map that the global navigation and wine categories were heavy, while the beer and non-alcoholic categories were lacking. To gain a better understanding of structure and layout on an alcohol e-commerce site, I conducted a competitive and comparative analysis with direct and indirect competitors on the market.

Redesigned Site Map

With the combined data from my card sorts and C&C analysis, I created a redesigned site map.

Streamlining the User Flow

In order to determine if this new site map would efficiently lead users to achieving their goal, I created a new user flow taking the user from home page exploration to the checkout process.

In revising the user flow, I focused on highlighting the fact that users can now go through the checkout process with ease and guidance. Although a few new steps were added, this flow ensures the user can easily move through the site, find what they're looking for, and checkout seamlessly.

Test & Iterate

Usability Tests

After several iterations of my sketched low-fidelity wireframes, I designed medium-fidelity wireframes and conducted 2 usability tests with paper prototypes.

Key Takeaways

• The filtered faceted navigation is intuitive

• The checkout flow was quick

• Users wanted to see reviews on the products list page

• Users wanted a gifting option

I used those findings to iterate on my design and build medium-fidelity wireframes.

I turned these wireframes into a clickable prototype in order to conduct 3 additional usability tests. This resulted in the design of a high-fidelity prototype that eliminated points of friction found in the navigation and current checkout flow.