About the project
Is “one size fits all” an accurate solution when you offer 10 different verticals?
This is the question which we tried to answer during this project.
Homebell was a platform that provided an online booking funnel, where customers could plan & book various craftsmen services for their home renovation projects. However, the flow was almost identical for painting, wallpapering or floor renovation.
In this project, we tried to find out what are the real users needs, and how can we improve and customise the current flow to boost their satisfaction. We decided to focus on one of the most popular verticals - wallpapering.
What was my process?
Research
Who are our customers and what are their needs?
Creating user personas
Defining 4 different personas based on the research we conducted.
Personas validation
Who knows customers best if not our colleagues from customer service & sales department?
Competitive research
What are the latest trends and what do our competitors offer?
Mouseflow
Conversion rate analysis: Where in the funnel do most customers drop?
Team brainstorming
Miro (previously Realtime Board) was our friend for brainstorming sessions.
Old screens vs new drafts
Mapping new screens & differences between current & new flow.
Prototype building
Internal user testing.
Fine designs
Final desgins, assets preparation & handover to developers.
Implementation
Supporting developers when they have questions & conducting design checks.
Understand your customers
Research
In order to understand better our customers, their feelings, expectations and possible frustrations, we conducted 13 qualitative interviews with existing & potential customers (our 'leads'). Each session lasted 30min. The interviews were conducted online via Zoom. Users were asked to pass through the wallpapering booking funnel while sharing their screen, and speak openly about their impressions during the booking process. We also gathered background information regarding their age, profession, technical understanding or favorite tools. After that, we asked a few follow up questions.
After careful data analysis, we derived customer patterns which we then used for creating 4 user personas.
We found out that:
- Users see a need of adding extra steps to the funnel. (e.g wallpaper selection or removal).
- They value professionalism, quick execution and simplicity of a booking.
- Their biggest frustrations are cancellations and delays, as well as issues related to technology.
- Younger & tech savvy audience would like to execute everything online (mostly on mobile device), while elderly audience prefers desktop view and a direct contact with a sales agent to finalise all the details.
Personas
We then created 4 different customer profiles presented on the image below.
Personas validation
Next, in order to validate our findings and gather some more information about customers behaviour, we made an internal survey, which was filled by 22 colleagues from customer service, and operations departments. We asked questions related to 4 different personas we defined.
Survey results confirmed our research. 72% of respondents said they talked to all 4 customer types, and only 1 respondent said he didn’t talk to any of the described user types. We also found out what are the biggest frustrations of our customers, and how many of them are delighted or disappointed with the service.
Competitive research
Next step in a discovery phase of our re-design process, was a competitive research. We looked what were the latest trends, and features in booking funnels of our direct and indirect competitors.
We were mostly interesting in finding out:
- how many steps do other funnels provide in average
- what kind of questions are asked
- what’s the structure of the funnels (e.g. is it a list or an open form?)
Mouseflow
Additionally we conducted an analysis of customers behavior with a help of Mouseflow. Mouseflow is an online platform that lets you replay the full visitor experience to identify pain points and increase the conversion rate.
We were able to retrieve heat-maps for both desktop and mobile, see the dropping rate per step in the funnel, and watch the recordings of customers going through the entire booking flow. This gave us better insights on how customers navigate, where do they click, and what are the bugs (e.g. we discovered that a slider didn’t work properly for almost 50% of the users).
Ideate, Prototype & Iterate
Team brainstorming
After a discovery phase and alignment with different stakeholders, it was the time for ideation part of the project & team brainstorming! Keeping in mind the results from our research phase, and thinking of our Personas we went through the desktop and mobile funnel steps. We gathered sticky notes regarding flow, user experience and UI.
Next step included affinity mapping, which let us sort and bundle the ideas. We created three categories, and sorted post-notes accordingly:
- New ideas - What steps are not yet included and should be considered?
- UX issues - Are there any points which may not be understandable or intuitive for users?
- UI improvements - What could be improved in the current user interface?
After post-notes were sorted out, we sat together and voted for the best ideas from each cluster. This let us create a new user flow, which was then a base to create initial wireframes of the re-vamped wallpapering booking funnel.
Old screens vs new drafts
Next steps included creating wireframes, and mockups. This phase involved multiple iterations, feedback sessions and prototype creation.
After the new flow has been sketched out, we did an internal user testing.
Internal user testing
For our internal user testing, we invited 5 colleagues from different departments. We scheduled individual 30min sessions and showed them a prototype. We then gave them few simple tasks and asked them follow up questions.
Video of a prototype can be found here. 📹
The results were really positive. All of our colleagues were able to perform the tasks with 95% success rate. There were no major UX issues, however we found few screens were improvements were needed.
Fine designs
Last step included creating fine designs. I designed simultaneously web & mobile version. I was also responsible for creating various assets that were part of the flow and preparing interactions documentation, which was needed for the implementation.
Results
After launching new wallpapering flow, we have noticed 3.5% increase in a conversion rate.
We sent surveys to customers who successfully booked the wallpapering project online, and we saw a satisfaction rate of 8.4/10.
Users liked mostly:
- Clear & logical steps
- Possibility to select a wallpaper online from a catalogue
- Instant price estimation after sending a quote
They also mentioned some things that could be improved, which were added to our improvements backlog and worked on in the next iteration.
