Aidan E.
Designed the MVP of a marketplace platform that signed 8 businesses within a week of product launch. The startup is now on track to sign 50+ businesses 6 months post-launch.
Because of Covid-19 most boutiques had to shut down for months. During these times most of these places lost at least 50% of their revenue from their customers. They also now had to do home delivery for each purchase they got from their customers because from April 2020 Halifax/Nova Scotia was closed down. Haligone decided to tackle this problem.
How might we create an user experience that helps boutique owners increase their online exposure and improve their delivery service?
To understand the pain points of boutique owners and consumers better, we interviewed over 20+ retail businesses and 5 consumers. From our user interviews we gathered 3 important insights in the market.
Based on our user interviews, I identified one type of user for the consumer and two types for boutique owners. I mapped out the frustrations and goals of each persona.
Based on user interviews, I mapped out the customer journey for boutique owners to find the opportunities we have to solve their pain points. Starting from their initial sign-up to receiving their first order from their customers, we identified four opportunities that we can use to gain an edge over our competition.
Based on my customer journey and user interviews, I mapped out the initial features that would most capitalize on the boutique owners' and consumers' needs during the pandemic.
I created the workflow of the web application. Both the consumer and the boutique owner have different workflows throughout their user experience. The workflow to the right was the final workflow we came up with after 5+ usability tests.
For the two wireframe versions, I did 10+ usability tests with boutique owners and 5 with the consumer. During these test sessions, I recorded the user interactions within the prototypes and later went back to fix parts of the design that confused them.
During the usability tests, for particular features such as Order tracking there were issues with UX writing and search options.
During the usability tests, for particular screens such as Product Details," there were issues with some UI elements that made it difficult for the consumers to shop products.
I wanted to give users a feeling of "growth" and "sustainability" which is why I relied on hues of green. I used black and serif fonts to signify the "sophisticated" feeling. That is why in many cards and buttons the colors "green" and "black" are very common and the fonts are Poppins and Droid-serif.
40% of consumers mentioned during user interviews they wanted to see their selected payment and product choice during the final checkout step.Thus, I added a visual representation of their selected credit card and product image.
75% of boutique owners mentioned during user interviews that they wanted to know the current stage of delivery for their products to the consumer. Based on the feedback, I came up with 4 different stages of delivery for Boutique Owners and color-coded them so it would be easier for them to track their order.
60% of consumers mentioned during user interviews that they wanted to see available size options of their product choice in the "Product Details" screen to make a confident decision. Based on this feedback, I removed a select option for product sizes and instead opted for a multiple button option.
After 16 weeks of conducting interviews and design, we launched the marketplace platform for Halifax businesses.
After our launch with our online platform, Shopify also decided to launch a similar option for local small businesses. After 2 months of competing with Shopify, Haligone decided to pivot their business to focus solely on delivery service.
In the last few months, we have added around 20+ businesses to deliver products across Halifax and working on a new application to help retail businesses deliver their products right to their customers' doorstep.