Hoby’s Honey & General Store
Online e-commerce Redesign

Client Ryan Hoback | Role UX Researcher & Designer | Duration 2 Weeks | Solo Project

Research Modalities: Heuristic Evaluation, Contextual Inquiry w/exit User Interviews (3 Participants), Comparative Task Analysis, Open Card Sorting, Competitive & Comparative Analysis, Content Audit, Affinity Map, User Persona (1), Site Mapping, Content Organizational Scheme, User Flow, Low-Mid Fidelity Wireframing, Prototype (Figma), Usability Testing (2 Participants).

The Brief

Hoby’s Honey & General Store is a local business shop in Jacksonville Florida owned and operated by Ryan Hoback. Prior to the pandemic, their website was not used extensively by users. During the pandemic, their sales dropped by half, but their website grew to 10% percent of their sales and brought a small boost in new customers.

The website overall checks all the boxes on the foundations of an e-commerce website. However, sales are stable but not growing. Why?

After a contextual inquiry with exit interviews, users revealed several issues surrounding the of placement of the information & content clarity. One critical aspect in particular that users pointed out was the function & information of the ‘Filter’ element.

The key deliverables are:

  • Redesign the Information Architecture, specifically the ‘Filter’ element
  • Consider different ways to present content that is clear & concise and captures the brand
  • Create more visually appealing & inviting designs of products

User Persona

User Persona for Case Study 1

Define

The first step of my research was to conduct a contextual inquiry with exit interviews. Because this is a local business, I recruited three local users in the area to participate. Afterwards, I synthesize my data into an affinity map, which allowed me to narrow my focus on the main issue, the information on the filter function.

With that, I proceeded to create my user persona taking into account the pain points I identified from my users. The total amount of pain points I found was six.

Pain Points

  • The presentation is not consistent and could be more clear and concise.
  • The website is missing vital information about the business, policies, and other important details.
  • The language and information needs to be on par and consistent with business brand, goal, and marketing.

With this, I created a problem stament and identified five ‘how might we?’ statements organized by priority.

Discover

To understand the function of the ‘Filter’ element, I conducted both a Competitive & Comparative Analysis. The purpose for this was to evaluate how their ‘Filter’ function worked and the information within is was organized. These well-known websites also served as inspiration for brainstorming solutions.

Competitive

  • Savannah Bee Company
  • Magic Spoon

Comparative

  • Bliss World
  • Humble Bundle

I then proceeded to conduct a Content Audit of products & categories. The purpose of this was to study how the filter categorize products and under which labels were categorize. I also studied the filter count, meaning how many products appeared based on the category.

Furthermore, I conducted an open card sorting to study what product groupings would be most intuitive. This helped me validate that less can definitely be more.

Key Research Findings

  • The filter information is inconsitent with product labels.
  • The filter categories were redundant and inconsistent.
  • There was an excessive number of filter categories.

Develop

To start the develop phase, keeping things simple, I created wireframe sketch exploring soultions based on pain points and user flow.

Then I proceeded to create a low-mid fidelity prototype that explored functional and visual layout of products. I also explore the presentation of the information archticture & content.

Delivery

After creating the low-mid fidelity prototype, I conducted a usability test to evaluate the basic flow and function of the prototype based on the user flow. Two users participated in the initial round of usability testing.

Both users seemed quite satisfied overall, but several minor issues were found in each case, such as a broken link and some elements being a bit small. After each test, I created performed another iteration on the prototype before moving on.

Next Steps & Key Learnings

When I started the project, I thought that I was expecting the greatest oppuritnities of improvement to be in website function and visual design. To my suprise, during my research, the tables turned challenging my initial assumptions. Challenge accepted!

Having my initial assumptions challenged is just as exciting as having them proven right. In this case, it was even more exciting because it offered a low cost & high impact solution to a major user expereince issue that I could present to the client.

That being said, there’s always room for improvement. Given the opportunity to continue the project, I would:

  • After implementing the updated content strategy, I would begin a new iteration process starting with research.
  • I would focus on presenting a more cohesive brand identity.
  • Write a style guide that is digestable and easy to update.

This was a nice project to spread my wings on the UX Design world. It is quite fascinating to learn the behind-the-scene of the UX design process and how it challenges the designers pre-assumptions. I am grateful for the insight that I gained during this experience. It left me with quite a BUZZ!

Always do your research, you never know what you might find.

Thank you so much for reading my design process! Cheers!

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