Simplifying a complex purchasing experience
THE ASK
Landlords and property managers are able to encourage energy conservation by accurately measuring and billing tenants for their individual water, electric and gas usage with EKM meters. I was tasked with simplifying the niche complexity of purchasing and installing a submetering package into a residence or building.
MY ROLE
UX designer— research, IA, wireframes, visuals
TEAM
Adam Brouwer (CEO)
Elise Fung (UX lead)
Kevin O’Leary (Dev. lead) Resden Logan (Dev.)
PROBLEM
↘
Customers try to purchase a system but often abandon cart or return the product because it requires an electrician’s expertise. How might we build consumer brand trust and offer the right support for purchasing a sub-metering system?
USER GOALS
Create a frictionless shopping experience that establishes brand trust, will find the right system based on the context of the residence is easy, doesn’t want to send back orders
BUSINESS GOALS
↓ Reduce customer service calls, SEO optimization ↑ Increase conversion rates and lower shopping cart drop-offs
ENGINEERING GOALS
Utilize Shopify’s out of the box functionality to reduce code. Client should be able to update content based on new product updates.
pre-purchase
ಠ_ಠ
“I’m skeptical”
during purchase
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“My electrician says I need additional CT’s. Can you direct me to what I need to order?
post-purchase
☹
“Hi I purchased the wrong product that won’t work for my home and I will need to do a return.”
customer satisfaction
｡◕‿◕｡
“You have truly exceptional customer service! At first I was skeptical but the meter has exceeded my expectations.”
Content audit + user journey mapping
I consulted with the CEO and sifted through customer calls and e-mails to understand the needs and frustrations of the primary users: homeowners and property managers, and secondary users: commercial companies such as EV and solar industries, to understand their needs and limitations.
How do customers perceive the value of low-cost products and how do we grow brand trust?
At which touch-points are customers picking the wrong products?
Insights + IA
Low-cost products elicit skepticism— build brand trust for a small business leading the submetering market
An online experience that falls short is currently addressed through excellent attentive customer support, we believe providing support earlier throughout the online experience wins customer trust and brand value. We strategized to engage first-time customers through their small but scalable use cases and carry them through the shopping experience with a customized approach.
Shopping assistant flow framework was mocked up based on basic, required and optional conditional statements.
Storytelling
Crafting EKM's story with embedded product offerings in-context a home and the cloud. Electricians and home owners alike perceived products as reliable but wanted to know if it was affordable with more explicit pricing up-front. With budget-concious consumers, price should be at the forefront.
An approachable Shopping Assistant
CONCEPT 1 The Check-list ✓
CONCEPT 2 The Conversation 𐄂
𐄂 Users stopped using the customization assistant mid-way expressing that questions were arduous.
Final Shopping Wizard Flow— HD frameworks documenting success and error states handed off
UI STYLE GUIDE AND EXECUTION
Via Google Analytics, it was found that EKM's user base age ranges from 30-70. I updated EKM's branding and UI assets to be an evolution, not a revolution. With little budget for high quality in-product photography, I created product illustrations.
“
The website as a whole provides a level of trust for first time visitors such that they are willing to place orders with confidence that they will receive the products, and that the products will do what they are promised to do.”
Adam, EKM CEO
OUTCOMES
Challenge Assumptions — The biggest challenge to this project was getting buy-in from the business stakeholder for user testing. I drafted up assumptions we had with the shopping wizard.
When the data isn’t there, lead with quantitative insights — Because he did not have preliminary analytics on the wizard’s usage patterns, I convinced him to see the value of user testing in order to build for the right outcome.
Prioritize with stack ranking — With a sales-driven approach and feature creep, I learned to manage the CEO’s prioritization with stack ranking and what to expect and what not to expect by collaborating on the shopping assistant decision tree.