The Background
PUYI OPTICAL, a long-established eyewear retail store with a wholesale presence in 28 major cities across the Asia Pacific, faced significant challenges during the pandemic as a traditional brick-and-mortar business. In response, the company initiated this research project to enhance its e-commerce site with the following goals:
Resolve the usability issues of the existing website.
Improve the integration between online and offline shopping experiences.
The Challenge
PUYI website users
As Hong Kong is renowned for its convenient offline shopping experience, people only began to adopt online shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic. This made it challenging to find existing PUYI website users to provide feedback on their website usage.
Poor Performance of E-Commerce Site:
PUYI had been struggling in attracting users to its e-commerce site and is uncertain why users abandon their carts at the checkout step and why browsing times are short.
The Methodologies
Based on the key objectives and challenges, we chose the below methods:
Heuristic Evaluation: Leveraging recognized usability principles for website design, this method allowed us to efficiently assess the user interface within a short time frame.
Exploratory Research + Moderated Usability Testing: To uncover the unmet needs of online shopping and to integrate the online and offline experiences, we included both Exploratory Research and Moderated Usability Testing. This approach allowed us to gain insights into people’s shopping pattern for eyewear products and to address the usability issues of the website.
Impact
New Categories for Different Persona
Based on different personas' preferences, PUYI added two categories PUYI EXCLUSIVE and COLLABORATION to help users quickly discover products related to their personal brands.
Onlne and offline integration
According to the user journey map, users find it challenging to make online purchases without trying on the products to see if they fit their faces. To address this issue, PUYI has aligned its offline resources with its online website, allowing users to reserve products in-store for a try-on session.
In the meantime, the company is collaborating with tech companies to embed a Virtual Try-On feature into the website, better catering to the needs of Gen Z users.
Heuristic Evaluation
In this session, I collaborated with a UX expert with 20 years of experience to evaluate the website's navigation and content. Additionally, we had a designer to map out the existing site structure of Puyi.com and highlight areas for improvement.
Moderated Usability Test
user recruitment
To recruit a diverse group of users, I have established the following criteria in addition to demographic factors for user screening:
Price Point: Since PUYI is a luxury brand, our target group must include individuals who can afford luxury price points.
Brands Bought: PUYI is akin to a high-end marketplace for eyewear products. We want to ensure that users have previously purchased brands featured in PUYI's product list.
Shopping Location: Understanding users' preferences for physical store locations and environments will help us tailor the in-store experience.
Online Experience: Our goal is to explore opportunities to integrate online and offline channels. Therefore, we seek individuals with experience shopping online. While it doesn't have to be on puyi.com, their experience should be with similar platforms.
Detail view of the criteria 👇
user interview guide
To better inform the business strategy, I created the following framework to structure the interview guide:
Personal ---> Product Related ---> Business Strategy
User’s Background (Motivation)
Past Experience (User Journey)
Product Usage (Product Features)
Purchase Behavior (Price Positioning)
Online or Offline (Sales Channel)
Branding (Go-To-Market Strategy)
I explored various tools and artifacts to visualize and quantify user feedback. For example, I utilized the UX radar, allowing users to rate their experience. This diagram provided the clarity and depth of user feedback, leading to actionable insights that can facilitate more targeted and effective improvements.
For abstract questions like, "What do you think of this brand?" I recognize it can be challenging for users to articulate their feelings. Therefore, I rephrased it to, "If you could choose one star to represent this brand, which would it be?" This makes the question more concrete and relatable.
Final Delivery
Based on the research findings from the online interviews, I identified four personas from the ten interviews. These personas helped inform the product and marketing teams in prioritizing critical product features.
To help the team better visualize the target customers' lifestyles around luxury and fashion products, I compiled images of the products and the purchasing platforms. This resource aided the team in brainstorming new business opportunities.
Based on the interviews and personas, I worked with a UX designer to map out the user journey to illustrate the users' thought processes, using different colors to differentiate between online and offline experiences. This map clearly showed how users shift between online and offline channels, helping us prioritize areas of focus.
