Brief
Redesign the Petbarn website to be more user friendly
& highlight the services Petbarn offer.

Petbarns Objective

• To be your one stop pet shop and build on their existing
  physical presence by boosting their online sales.
• To make their customers more aware of all the services
  they currently offer which are being under utilised.

My role in this project

• User research
• User interviews
• Data analysis & synthesising
• Information architecture
• Creating prototypes
• Usability test prototypes
• Presenting the project

UX Challenges
Getting to know the user

10 Interviews to Understand Customers
First we needed to clearly define who Petbarns customers are and how the
customers currently interact with Petbarn. We spoke with 10 pet owners about
their instore and online shopping habits.

Our key insights were:

• 80% of users prefer to shop in store
• Online shoppers only buy pet food
• Online shoppers may consider buying flea/tick treatment
• Online Shoppers Google search for the cheapest store.
• 100% of users said the current Petbarn website was confusing, difficult to use & more expensive
• 100% of users didn’t want to pay for shipping.

90 Pet owners Surveyed
To get a clearer picture we surveyed 90 people to see:

• What types of products they buy in store vs online,
• What kind of pets (dog, cat, rabbit etc) people have
• How many pets
• What pet services they use (dog wash/grooming, pet sitting, boarding etc)
• How often they purchase pet products.

Our key insights from the surveys:

• Majority of people own 1 pet, 80% said it’s a dog
• People buy pet products (mostly food) every 2-3 months
• The most used pet service was dog washing
• Users are more likely to use the Petbarn website if it was
  easier to use, offered cheaper prices (as they can currently
  get things cheaper elsewhere online), and if they offered free,
  fast delivery.
• Most of our users thought Petbarn only sold products and were
  currently unaware of all the services Petbarn offer.

Personas
Through synthesising the data we collected through our interviews and survey, we were able to identify 2 personas based on online vs in store.

Becky – Shops In store, she has a dog.
Becky only shops in store. This is because it’s convenient. Becky also love being able to chat with staff and get help and advice.

Dave – Shops online, He and his wife have a dog and a cat.
Dave buys most of his pet products in store but will shop online for the cheapest pet food or flea and tick treatment he can find.

Value Proposition
We then created value propositions for each of them. This helped us better understand them, the way they interact with Petbarn and their pains and gains with using Petbarns current site.

Competitor Analysis
It was important to conduct competitor analysis to see how Petbarns current site compares to some of the most popular online pet stores.

Petcircle.com.au

budgetpetproducts.com.au

Our key findings were that:

• Some of the sites are also difficult to navigate
• The prices are cheaper
• They all offer free shipping once customers spend a certain amount
• They all offer the ability to chat with someone to get help and advice.

How Users Look for Products?
We conducted card sorting workshops with 6 users to understand how they would look for products on a online store and how they would catagorise the products available. Users were asked to group items together under headings they would expect to find them under online. This helped us create our user-flow and sitemap which helped us develop our wireframes.

What does success look like?
At a minimum we needed to create a user friendly e-commerce site that had a streamlined shopping experience and that highlighted the pet services Petbarn offer.

A/B Testing Home Page Solutions
We conducted A/B testing of some potential home screens to see what users preferred. There were 3 options:

• One highlighted the services provided
• The second focused on subscription services
• The third showed the products available at Petbarn and also highlighted that there were services available.

Our users unanimously felt the same way:

• They found the first 2 options confusing as they could not find the products easily
• All users said “I expect Petbarn to sell products”.
• They all felt the third option allowed them to find what they wanted much easier but felt it didn’t highlight the features enough to make them stand out.

Wireframe Testing
Wireframes were then drawn up utilising our user-flow and sitemap.

Our goals were:

• Create a mobile friendly e-commerce website
• Make sure users can easily find the products they are looking for
• Make the shopping cart and check out as quick and simple as possible
• Highlight the services Petbarn provide.

These were user tested and further refined based on the responses we received:

• Make buying products easier from the home page
• Highlight the services provided even more
• Simplify the shopping process and make it clearer how far through the process they are

Hi-Fi Prototypes
Keeping within Petbarns current branding guide, those revisions were then converted to high fidelity prototypes and tested again.

We discovered that:

• Our users liked the look and feel of the site and could easily locate the products
• It still wasn’t easy to see that Petbarn also provided pet services
• Users really wanted the ability to chat with a staff member and get help and advice.

Tweaks & Changes
We refined the home page once again to highlight the services more

Upon further testing:

• Users could still easily find the pet products they were looking for
• Users were now more aware of the pet services Petbarn offered and how to find them.
• They all found it easy to locate the product they were looking for, add it to their cart and checkout easily
• All the users tested said they found the prototype to be a much better site to use.

Next Steps & Recommendations
Because this is still an early prototype, I would user test the current version with 3 or 4 more pet owners to help quantify how users interact with it & pinpoint areas that could still be improved upon. I would then make further refinements based on user feedback and test again.

I would also integrate some key features from the current Petbarn site such as user profiles and their loyalty program.

Recommendations based on user feedback

• I recommend that Petbarn change their shipping charges to being free once customers spend over $30. (This will also bring them into line with other popular online pet stores).
• I recommend they look at lowering their online prices. In some cases, Petbarns online price is 40% more than their competitors and this will help them capture more of the online market.