A UX persona is a fictional character which represents certain traits and qualities of real users of our business. Personas are an important tool for understanding and empathizing with your target audience. They are always based on real data.
In the User Experience audit, we've taken a closer look at the shopping patterns and needs of our key customer persona, Anna, a 35-year-old working mother of two and a dog owner. The objective is to identify gaps in user experience and offer actionable recommendations to enhance online shopping.
Who is Anna?
Anna is an active and health-conscious 35-year-old woman who balances her career while being a mother to two children and a pet owner. She tends to shop online, primarily for its convenience and because it allows her to find time when her kids are asleep. Anna is budget-conscious but also focuses on quality over price.
Identified UX Problems
Inefficient Information Architecture
- Categories are inconsistent; e.g., a single 'Men's' category with a wide range of products while 'Women's' products are broken down into multiple subcategories.
Poor Product Filtering and Categorization
- Limited subcategories for pet products and other essentials. It makes finding products in this main category very hard or impossible.
- Non-intuitive filters, such as missing "Color of Paint" or "Brand" filters in the "Hair Dyes" section.
Search Engine Limitations
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Absence of synonyms or natural language processing, resulting in ineffective search results; e.g., "mascara" yielding no results.
Anna's User Journey: A Cognitive Walkthrough
The cognitive walkthrough involves simulating user behavior when pursuing a specific goal step-by-step (here : buying a product from the list), then answering a series of user experience questions at each step.
We used Anna's persona to simulate a shopping experience and generated the following shopping list:
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Jarred baby food with broccoli (10 pieces)
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Hairbrush
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Children's toothpaste
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Adult dog food: dry and beef-flavored
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Red hybrid nail polish
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Anti-colic feeding bottle (either glass or BPA-free plastic)
Cognitive walkthrough results:
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Problem finding a category with baby food - not sure whether to search in the "Food" or "Mom and Baby" categories.
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Baby food cannot be filtered by taste, you have to browse the description of each product
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No listed composition of baby food
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Is unable to add 10 pcs by writing the number of pcs. The user has to click the "Buy now" button 10 times.
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We searched for hair brushes in the "Hair" category, but found that the brushes are in the "Beauty Accessories" category.
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It is not clear whether to look for children's toothpaste in the "Hygiene" or "Mom and baby" category It turned out that this product is in the "Hygiene - Oral hygiene" category, but there is no "children's toothpaste" filter and the user has to browse 7 pages of products, where among 83 toothpastes, only 5 of them are for children. If you type "toothpaste for children" into the search engine, the number of results displayed is 1.
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In the "For dog" category, there are no subcategories or product filtering. There are 1125 total products for dogs, on 47 pages. Finding food by its type (dry vs. wet), for an adult dog, neutered dog and specific flavor is impossible without browsing product descriptions, which is very time-consuming.Entering a search query into a search engine gives only a slightly better result, because foods appear, but no longer without any division, and cat foods also happen to appear in the results.
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When the user enters the query "hybrid polish" into the search engine, the results are shown for all nail polishes (344 results). In the "nail polish" category, there is no "hybrid" filter, so the user again has to browse through the descriptions to choose the right product.
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In baby bottles, there is no "anti-colic" filter. When you type "anti-colic bottle" into the search engine, such bottles are shown, but the list of results omits products that have "bottle with anti-colic cap" in the description. The bottles cannot be filtered by the material they are made of (glass/plastic), and there is no "BPA-free" filter. The cognitive walkthrough showed that finding each of the products on the list can be very difficult and sometimes impossible in the limited time available. This may be the main reason that customers buy fewer products from an online store than from a stationary one.
Key Pain Points
- Confusing Category Names: Unclear where to find specific baby or pet products.
- Inadequate Filters: Absence of essential filters like flavor for baby food or type of dog food.
- Search Functionality: Unreliable search engine that does not understand common synonyms or descriptive words.
Recommendations for UX Improvements
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Redefine Information Architecture: Consider revising the categories and subcategories to better align with user expectations.
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Enhance Product Filtering: Introduce more intuitive and detailed filters to allow users to narrow down their choices effectively.
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Optimize Search Engine: Incorporate natural language processing and synonyms to make the search functionality more responsive and user-friendly.
What’s next?
In the next post we will describe changes deployed after the audit, how they changed purchase statistics and what the users said about the new version of e-commerce.
