It was apparent from early on that there was little reporting on site usability or common customer frustration points for the brand website. The brand managers were taking on the role of the user when developing ideas and didn't have the time, resource or knowledge to fully flesh out new ideas.
I proposed building a library of baseline user testing reports for the brands to help guide and educate them about what is actually happening and how they can improve it.
MY ROLE
To write, organise, facilitate, mediate and compose a brand by brand user audit of 14 e-commerce sites. After the completion of each report we ran a small workshop where key stakeholders from the business and brands were taken through the report, able to watch the usability videos and ask any questions.
THE BRIEF
Origins were the first site we did, this was also the first time Estee Lauder Companies had had this type of research done on their site. This was the game changer, the linchpin, the starting block.
We interviewed the brand for their KPI's and went through their forecasted marketing calendar to identify some patterns. We also got them to look through their analytics so they got a view of what was going on and to get them to identify points that they wanted to look at.
We built out a testing script based on what the brand felt was important and what the analytics had shown up and got them to sit the test to make sure they were happy with what we were exploring.
TESTING
In the interest of time and skipping over an enormous amount of red tape to prove the ROI of these reports, we went remote. We set up the tests and got to work.
A few of the tests followed the typical e-com journey and product discovery. We also ran a few brand-specific discovery tasks and across all three types of device. 20 tests in total and they didn't disappoint, we picked up some pretty major issues which had to be raised immediately after finding them.
BUILDING OUT THE REPORTS
We spent the next few days auditing the videos, marking and mapping points of significance and writing them down.
Because of the way the sites are built and the mentality within the brands on how online works we split the report out by each device. We were bound to see overlaps of issues but it allowed the brand to raise specific issues easily.
OUTCOME
It was safe to say the brands were more than impressed with what was discovered, most of the findings the brand had no idea about.
Origins paved the way for research on all other brands, we audited a few more brands after and provided similar reports and improved on our process while we were at it.
We built out specific briefing templates, process documentation and also educational materials to give the brands so they can scope and investigate themselves.
