Recreate the In-Store Experience that Book Shopper Enjoy into the Online Environment
Summary
The Challange
Readings is a renowned Melbourne bookstore, loved by its local community. Currently, it needs to increase online sales to bring additional revenue for the business and wider financial growth.
My Role and Process
I collaborated with three other designers in a 2-week Design Sprint to solve this challenge. We applied the Design Thinking method– started by gaining deep insights into the business and problem, understand the people we are designing for, and analysed the market– in particular online book shopping segment.
- I conducted user research by talking to Readings customers at the stores in different locations.
- We synthesized all collected data via an affinity map, defined the right problem and uncover underlying opportunities.
- Generate and explore ideas via Crazy 8’s to build rapid prototypes for testing in an iterative process.
- I took the mid-fidelity wireframes to the next level in Figma and fine-tuned all the details, such as colours, images, fonts, and icons.
The Solution
To achieve this financial growth, we redesigned the existing e-commerce website by focusing on adopting the in-store experience into the online experience. Recreating the browsing-friendly environment and a sense of community.
The Outcome
This was done by implementing a dashboard for users, creating a more community centred experience with personalised recommendations and book reviews by the locals. We made the website more browsable through:
- highlighting Reading’s recommendations and similar products,
- allowing customers to preview pages before making a purchase,
- improving the information architecture, and
- adding filter capability for search function of the site.
The success of this redesigned would be measured around the increase in sales and return customers. By implementing the browsing-friendly vibe seen in stores, it is also highly relevant to set the metrics on the duration of visitors browsing online.
View Readings mid-fidelity prototype (in Figma)
Learn more about my process, please keep reading 😊
Overview
Visiting a bookstore in your local and spending time browsing books, given that you are not in a rush– tends to be an enjoyable experience. You can interact directly with physical books and surrounding; such as feel the textures, read a couple of pages, get help from friendly staff and talking to people in the store. On the other hand, when we purchase books online, the experience is usually fragmented and has limited interaction with others. These limitations mean you’ll need to search for reviews on Google and several other websites to buy the books that match your purpose.
Who is Readings?
Readings first opened in 1969, currently have seven shops in different locations in Melbourne. Besides providing that lovely and welcoming atmosphere for their customers, they also won the best bookstore in the world for advocating local literature by giving literary prizes to Australian authors.
Research
The Approach
Before any design work, we needed to know:
- who are Readings customers and how they interact with the brand?
- To understand what motivates customers to visit either physical stores or e-commerce sites, and
- their behaviours around purchasing books online.
We also conducted contextual inquiries/ user observation on the current website, competitors analysis and talked to Readings customers at the stores in different locations.
Books Sales Industry
We combined our market research findings with insights from customers to understand how people shop for books online and offline.
The Numbers Said
What we found is that:
- book sales continue to see an increase in Australia, with higher purchased for physical books compared to eBooks.
- Online book shopping continues to gain popularity, and
- personal development book sales have seen the highest growth and become one of the top contributors to the industries success.
- A majority of households shop online and have high expectations around the online experience that include fast shipping, and easy returns.
The Competition Landscape
What we found in the competitive analysis:
- Dymocks, an Australian owned bookstore, is one of Readings main competitors, it has an advanced web presence with cheaper prices.
- Booktopia, an international player like Amazon offers competitive prices and convenient, however, they don’t have a big enough market share compare to other regions due to insufficient local knowledge. While Booktopia has the largest online market share in Australia book sales, but they do not have physical stores.
From here, we learned what differentiate Readings from their competitors that they have a strong community bond. Readings support national authors by hosting many writer’s talks and book launch events for the local communities to discuss literature and book signing from Australian authors.
Empathise with Customers
The user research focuses on understanding the current Readings customers, how they shop in-store and online, how they interact with the brand: what Readings mean to them.
Contextual Inquiries
We conducted five contextual inquiry sessions with target users to observe how users were currently using Readings website, to find common pain-points and needs that could inform improvement and feature prioritisation.
We found that users became frustrated when using the current website: a massive menu or sitemap, limited search function with no option for refinement, user ended up abandoned the website.
User Interviews
Our interview questions covered topics around why customers buy books from Readings and what motivates them to return to the bookstore. We also wanted to learn about customer’s behaviour surrounding book discovery and online books shopping.
After 18 interviews with Readings customers and book shoppers, we learned:
- Customers love browsing books and have the option to read part of the books before purchasing.
- People want to get book recommendations from friends, family or experts, including staff from bookstores to purchase a book.
- Users are unable to find the books they are looking for on Readings website. Most of them ended up felt frustrated while using the website and left.
- Readings customers want to support their local bookstore and Australian authors, they don’t mind to pay higher prices to shop local.
I love going to small community bookstore than online
Bookstore is all about the experience of browsing and perusing.
Readings website is not up-to-date.
I prefer going to bookstore and buy a physical book.
We found that many customers visited the stores because they enjoyed the atmosphere Readings offered. They can browse comfortably and used Readings recommendations to discover more books.
Readings customers were also driven by their motivation to support their community and Australian authors. They preferred to shop local rather than hunting for discounts.
Meet Karen
We synthesised all collected data and created a Readings persona. By creating a user persona, it enables us to empathise with the user’s to define the right problem and help them find the right solutions.
Karen is a high school teacher who loves books. She enjoys discussing her currently readings with others by going to Readings events during the school holiday. She is also interested in supporting her local community and Australian authors.
However, during the busy school calendar– she is too busy to go to the events and bookstore. She often encounters difficulty finding books she likes to read from resources she could trusts. This makes her feel disconnected from her community. Karen needs personalised book recommendations and an easy way to purchase online like the way she does in-store.
Define the Right Problem:
Online shoppers need a personalised experience and interaction to purchase books online like the way they have in-store. So they can easily buy the books they want and feel connected to their locals.
Solution
With the right problem and the understanding of the users, we progressed to find solutions that would add value to Karen and Readings.
New Information Architecture
We conducted card sort sessions with target users to improve the site structure.
Proposed future User flow — the Happy Path
The purpose of creating user flow is to help visualise the steps and content required for users to browse and buy books. I designed what an ideal user flow might look like, where Karen can browse for books easily and get recommendations as she gets in-store. We also offered a one-click checkout option for login members.
Sketching Ideas/ Solutions
Using what we learned from the research so far, we explored and generated ideas through Crazy 8’s method. It is a method to sketch eight ideas at a time individually and share with the team. And then we prioritised the high impact — low effort features to provide the most value for users and the business.
We decided to prioritise these functionalities in this design sprint:
- Improved the search and refinement capabilities.
- A personalised dashboard and book recommendations.
- Implement the community aspect by providing books reviews from the locals and upcoming event updates.
- Imitating the gesture of sneak-peak into a book before purchasing.
Prototyping
Modular Paper Prototype
We built a modular paper prototype and began testing with target users to validate the design and expectations. We asked the participants to browse and complete several tasks. Observed their interaction with the prototype, and took notes on what had not been expected by the users or considered by us.
Mid-fidelity Prototype
We applied the search function with the capability to refine search using filters. This effort aims to improve the user experience when finding the book they want to buy or review.
Users will see the personalised book recommendations from the bookstore and their networks. They also can see book reviews from locals on their dashboard.
On the product page, we included the ‘Preview Chapter 1’ feature and personalised recommendations, aimed to recreate the experience customers have in store.
Usability Testing and Iterations
Through usability testing, we were able to simplify features and stay focus on the goal by reducing functionalities that were not relevant and create familiar interactions and interface for the users.
Some of the feedback we received from the participants were:
- The users liked the “one-click checkout” button. This function enables quick and easy checkout for return/login customers.
- Users found the icon of the ‘preview chapter 1’ button was unfamiliar. We need to
- We created a social network system for the users to allow them to share the books they read with their networks. They were happy to receive books recommendation from others. However, the social system is a complex feature to develop, so we figured that it will go into the future sprint.
Hi-fidelity Prototype
In the hi-fi prototype, I implemented new information architecture, search refinement options and personalised dashboard, aimed to offer Readings customers a website that they would enjoy using and add values
Reflection
I have learned a lot about Readings bookstore, how the customers perceive them as a brand and great insight into books online shopping to help informed our design to better serve the customer.
On the personal note, this project has provided deep learning into the Design Sprint methodology, such as how to ask open-ended questions; how to identify the right problem to solve and how to get the buy-in from all stakeholder. I also found it was initially confronting to approach random customers at the bookstores, but I got better towards the 5th customers.
Kudos
The UX Team: Chanelle Nasser, Leslie Liwanen, Spencer Moore
References
IBISWorld (2019). Online Book Sales in Australia. Retrieved 5 December 2019, from https://www.ibisworld.com.au/industry-trends/specialised-market-research-reports/online-retail/online-book-sales.html
NAB Business. (2019). NAB Online Retail Sales Index, August 2019. https://business.nab.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/NAB-Online-Retail-Sales-Index-August-2019.pdf
Australia Post. (2019). Inside Australian Online Shopping. (2019). Retrieved 5 December 2019, from https://auspost.com.au/content/dam/auspost_corp/media/documents/inside-australian-online-shopping-ecommerce-report.pdf
Australian Bureau of Statistics (2019). Retail Trade Australia (May 2019). TABLE 11. Retail Turnover, State by Industry Subgroup, Original. Retrieved 5 December 2019, from https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/8501.0May%202019?OpenDocument
PWC Australia (2019) Consumer and Educational Books (2019). https://www.pwc.com.au/industry/entertainment-and-media-trends-analysis/outlook/consumer-and-educational-books.html
Illustration Ouch! https://icons8.com
