Challenges
Sift & Pick is a successful online marketplace that curates and showcases Singapore’s best local and overseas designer brands for fashion and lifestyle accessories. However, as COVID-19 has impacted their customers’ behaviours, Sift & Pick wanted to investigate further their customers’ needs and pain points to review their business strategy.
Business objectives
The last NPS survey that Sift & Pick conducted raised pain points which left them dubious as they did not have any context from the customers. It was difficult for them to relate to what the customers meant.The research objectives were to understand Sift & Pick customers better, uncover ways to improve their shopping experience on the website, and discover potential opportunities for their business.
Process
The project lasted a bit more than ten weeks. To ensure a rapid and transparent flow, and keep the stakeholders involved in the research, we adopted a one-week sprint cadence.
Sprints 1-2
- Desk research based on Google analytics, NPS raw data and heuristic evaluation to understand the existing context, look for the pain points and challenges experienced by the customers.
- Stakeholders workshop on Miro to align on the objectives and logistics of the research to write the research plan.
Sprints 3-6
Preparation (recruitment of the users and interview scheduling) and conduction of the user sessions (user interviews + usability walkthroughs)
Sprints 7-8
Preparation of the competitive analysis, which was later modified from a SWOT analysis to a UX benchmark.
Sprints 9-10+
Preparation of the report in Figma and presentation to the client.
Solution
The research report has been delivered in July 2022. Some of the recommendations from the report have been promptly implemented by the client (even before the report was completely finalised!).
We have yet to know the impact on their sales and customer satisfaction rate.
To measure the improvement, I would:
check the conversion rate before and after the changes have been made,
check the drop off rate at the product page and the payment stages.
This project was very important for Red Airship because it was one of the first end-to-end research project they have conducted for a client.
Retrospective
After discussion with direct colleagues through a retrospective and my mentor, this is what I would do differently next time:
Align on the competitive analysis sooner - We thought we would conduct a SWOT analysis for the competitors, and finally realised that the client was not comfortable with this approach. Finally we were satisfied with the result of the UX benchmark, and so were the clients, but it took us more time than planned.
Align on a format for the report from the beginning - As we started to work on Google slides, we have done some of the deliverables in Miro and Sketch. When we switched to Figma, we had to rework everything.
In rush time, still find time to communicate - At the end of the project, as we were rushing to finish the report, I did not give enough direct instructions and there were some miscommunication and misalignment that caused some stressful situations. As I have worked with my team mate for a long time, I also thought we were already aligned on everything. Never take things for granted.