Chilli Coral eCommerce Site
Information Architecture | User Interface | Interactive Prototyping
A concept project that focuses on developing an easy-access and delightful e-shopping experience of Chilli Coral for Busy Buyer.
Project Overview
“How might we develop a simple and delightful gift shopping experience for Busy Buyer on Chilli Coral website?”
Chilli Coral is a lifestyle, homeware and giftware boutique store located on Crown Street, Surry Hills. They provide a wide range of products that allow customers to dive in and treasure hunt. When it comes to e-commerce experience, a treasure hunt is not a good idea, not to mention if someone is as busy as our archetype - Busy Buyer. That’s why we have to simplify the shopping experience and create a delightful shopping journey for Busy Buyer.
Task
As Chilli Coral doesn’t have a website yet, we are required to create an eCommerce site with simple and delightful shopping journey focus on primary archetype - Busy Buyer.
Approach
Observe → Organise → Design → Iterate
Observe
Organise
Business Analysis
Contextual Inquiry
Information Architecture
System Map
User Flow
Scenarios
User Flow
Design
Key Features
Competitor Res.
Develop Prototype
Iterate
Usability Testing
Iteration
Present
Usability Testing
Iteration
Presentation
Problem
“I don’t have time to treasure hunt. And sometimes I don’t really have an idea of what to buy.”
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"Treasure hunt" shopping experience is not suitable for Busy Buyer
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Busy Buyer are in a hurry and have no time to search for the ideal gift option
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They need an efficient way to purchase an ideal gift
Solution
“Simple search function + Quick inspiration, Easy Checkout + Allow collect at the store”
Based on the challenges we discovered above, we can then narrow down the design direction into two focuses:
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For those Busy Buyer already know what they want to buy:
Provide a simple search function and easy checkout experience, also allow “collect at the store” function for those who cannot wait for the delivery -
For those Busy Buyer do not know what to buy:
Provide quick inspiration section and easy checkout experience, also allow “collect at the store” function for those who cannot wait for the delivery
1. What's New Section
Provide inspiration for customers which will eventually boost sales.
With quick Add-To-Cart function and add to Wishlist function.
2. Gifts & New Arrivals
Customer can explore inspiration furthermore in Gifts and New Arrivals section.
3. Inspiration Section
Allow customer to choose among "For Him", "For Her" or " For Kid".
Which will help them narrow down with specific direction to browse.
4. Preview Thumbnails
Provide different perspective of preview images.
5. Related Products Section
Provide related products, which will increase the successful checkout rate.
6. Collect at Store
Customer can collect at store which can avoid the potential risk and the incontrol schedule of shipping.
7. One-Page Checkout
Customer can estimate how long does it take for checkout.
Process
Observe
“Don’t look at the pictures and imagine the business, but visit them, talk to them in the real world”
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Facebook page and Instagram account:
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Keep their customers up to date
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lots of people who love Chilli Coral because of the service and product they provide
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In the contextual inquiry
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Chilli Coral has a lot of products, which is not organised in a simple structure
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Most of the customer needs shopkeeper to locate the goods that they are looking for, or needs the shopkeep to introduce goods based on their conversation.
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The shopkeeper also mentioned that their products do not follow a category list, and they buy various products from time to time
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Organise
“I’m really excited when seeing lots of products in the store. But I’ll definitely be pissed off if it happens online.”
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Chilli Coral is an amazing gift shop which provides hundreds of choices, need to organise the products into a reasonable and learnable structure
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First Step:
Categorise the products into reasonable categories, such as “Kitchenware”, “Grooming”, “Grab & Go” etc. -
Second Step:
create the top-level categories of “home” and “non-home”, as Chilli Coral is a “Gift and Homeware” shop -
Third Step:
some of the subcategories can be in both top-level categories, which will help users to find what they are looking for in a less complicated journey.
Design
“Less is more. But how might we keep the experience simple yet supportive?”
I began by writing some scenarios, showing the happy path of our users:
1. “James is going to get his friend a birthday gift. James knows his friend love shoes, but James is not really good at fashion and style, so he needs some inspiration”
2. “Louise just remembered it’s her best friend’s birthday next week and wants to get her best friend a decent gift. She doesn’t have much time to shop, so she is looking for some quick inspiration.”
3. Ray’s girlfriend really liked the tote bag that he recently bought for his friend. He’d like to get his girlfriend the same one, but he can’t remember exactly what it looked like.”
Based on the scenarios, I can now think about the system map and the user flows, which will help me to design in a more structured way. Then, I started to create a system map that shows the whole picture of the eCommerce site.
Iterate
“Is there any confusion? Can the user experience what we’ve designed?”
Then, I conducted usability testings with various users on the interactive prototype in different scenarios. Resulting in a few changes of details, including the easy add-to-cart function, one-page checkout feature.
In the future
“User experience project never end, it keeps evolving.”
I believe there are a few things we can make the whole eCommerce site better:
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Card sorting again with the real product list
As the product list is just based on what I can find in the store -
Formal usability testings
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Develop higher fidelity prototype