Finding Our North Star
P&G knew that one of their biggest online problems was product choice confusion and they didn't have a great understanding of how their old website taxonomy, content & design wasn't helping women get to the right product. To begin with, we looked at analytics and found low conversion and the path to product wasn’t helping. Women bounced back and forth from product to product or category to category only to abandon the site.
Heuristic Analysis
Next, I performed a heuristic analysis on the website experience; identifying many usability problems & hypotheses that informed our user research plan.
Portion of Heuristic Analysis
User Research
Working closely with the research team at P&G, I gathered my evidence and proposed a usability study to uncover the biggest pain-points with their website. From there I wrote a testing plan and script.
What We Found
The vast majority of Olay shoppers fall into a similar journey (below). We uncovered that Olay had some major roles in some steps but not others. This really helped us understand what women need from Olay.com and when they might come to the site for help or purchasing.
Journey Stages:
Casual Learning
Shoppers in this phase will primarily choose to go directly to their preferred retailer site (manually types in address) to start shopping. They first shop by need/form, then additional attributes, reviews, brand, then price.
Shoppers stated they would not go to a manufacturer’s site because they want to see all their price and retail options. Additionally, many shoppers chose their preferred retailer because they already have their account profiles set up and they can combine their order with other needs for their entire family.
Olay.com’s Current Role: None/small
Intentional Browsing
Currently this behavior is happening on 3rd party retailer sites; however, if the shopper feels they aren’t getting all the information they want from the retailer, they would consider visiting the manufacturer’s site.
Their expectation is Olay.com has extensive product detail information beyond what she can find on ecommerce sites. She’s looking for benefits, ingredients, how to use instructions, and proof of performance.
Olay.com’s Role: Strong opportunity to capture shoppers with detailed product info and scientific innovations.
Validation
Shoppers in this phase rely on 3rd party retailer product page reviews. They will sort the reviews looking for both the best comments and the worst. Additionally, they like the ability to filter by keywords and reviewer type. Sephora for example allows shoppers to sort reviews by expert, staff member, editor, or shopper.
If the reviews aren’t enough, she will look to additional expert sources for reassurance typically offline. Some shoppers did say they would consider going to Olay.com to see further reviews of the product and more product detail information, however they question how trustworthy the reviews are when on the brand website.
Olay.com’s Role: Weak, content didn’t meet validation needs but strong opportunity to win in this phase
Immersion
This behavior is happening on 3rd party retailer sites; however, if the shopper feels they aren’t getting all the information they want from the retailer, they would consider visiting the manufacturer’s site.
Their expectation is Olay.com has extensive product detail information beyond what she can find on retailer sites. She’s looking for benefits, ingredients, how to use instructions, and proof of performance.
Olay.com’s Role: Limited due to lack of relevant content, yet strong opportunity to capture shoppers
So, What Was The
"So, What?"
Our North Star
Shoppers don’t see Olay.com as a shopping destination. Instead, they regard it as an optional tool for further product information if needed.