Role: UX Research Lead
Client: International E-Commerce DTC Productivity Tool Company; worked with client contracted through venture studio Juxtapose.
Core Responsibilities: user research, survey development, persona development, brand & content testing, interview moderation, data analysis
Methodology: Survey, Qualitative Interviews, Brand & Content Testing
Tools: SurveyMonkey, Zoom, Condens, Google Workplace (Docs, Sheets, Slides)
*Note: client name and findings have been obscured from this public portfolio due to confidentiality agreement.

Context

The client is a leading DTC e-commerce company in the 62.5 billion dollar productivity industry, specializing in products such as journals, planners, and conversation decks. 

Situation / Background

The client wanted to identify and better understand their customer segments in effort to further align product page and overall site content, design, IA, and brand feel, as well as to inform future product development. 

Objective 

Better understand who the audience of the e-commerce client is to help inform changes to web design/information architecture, product page design, product page verbiage, and creation of new products that would have a beneficial impact on web users and consumers.

Methodology

UX research: Survey 

I created a survey with the intention of starting to break down the various segments of the client's customers. The survey was sent to 50,000 people on the company's email list via an email campaign, and included an opportunity to opt-in to the possibility of a follow-up user interview. The survey included various routing patterns and skip logic to dig deeper into different participant backgrounds based on their responses.

The survey consisted of 19 questions, took roughly 5-7 minutes to complete, depending on participant routing. I organized the survey into general sections, including relationship to the brand, general everyday motivations, and general demographics.

The survey yielded a .03% completion rate. Upon getting the results back, I used affinity mapping and various filtering within SurveyMonkey to group together findings to start to craft possible customer segments/persona groupings. This allowed me to start to paint a picture of who the client's customers were, and to dig in deeper with interviews.

UX research: Interviews

I developed an interview guide that delved deeper into the participants day-to-day, goals, and motivations, as well as their engagement with the company's products to help us inform customer segments, and then personas. Below is a sample from the interview guide:

I selected participants that had opted-in to participating in a 60-minute user interview from within each early stage customer segment, and contacted them directly to schedule a time for a session. 10 participants were interviewed, and helped to solidify the customer segments that would be used for persona development.

Brand & Concept testing

Within each qualitative interview, I also conducted brand and concept testing using images and possible homepage layouts provided by members of the client's design & creative teams. The responses to this testing also helped to inform persona development. An example of one of the images shown to participants for testing is below:

Result

I created two personas, which helped the company utilize the information found through user research to speak in a personalized manner, dial in on brand feel, inform content strategy, and develop new products. Persona images are included below, blurred due to proprietary information. Additional insights and user feedback were shared with the client, including themes in customer needs, engagement with, and behaviors around the company's brand and productivity tools in general.