Orient Electric —E-comm Website Story
UX Design — UX Research
Introduction & Context:
Orient Electric, a leading Indian electronics retailer valued at $600mn, dominates the market with a wide range of household appliances sold for 80 years. As India increasingly moves online, Orient aims to revamp its e-commerce website to cater to diverse customer demographics. Noor Inc. a globally known design firm has been selected to handle the UX Design of this project.
My Role:
I was a UX Researcher-Designer, part of a 5 member UX Research and 4 member UX Design team.
Timelines:
The project was divided into three phases with a total timeline of three and a half months: April to July 2021.
Research Statement and Goals:
Our overall aim was to create a captive, consumer-centric platform that enables consumers of all demographics to have an engaging, easy and intuitive shopping experience.
To achieve this, we set definitive goals for our research task:
Phase 1: Research!
To address different research needs for Orient Electric, we split our approach into two distinct types of work.
- Firstly, we undertook quantitative analysis using surveys and desk research for broad insights like common issues and user perceptions of the brand.
- Secondly, we conducted qualitative research through user interviews and observation to delve into the reasons behind these behaviors and thoughts.
For the sake of brevity, I combined findings from every research phase and presented them as insights at the end!
Surveys & Desk Research:
Surveys:
Given the tight timeline, we decided to do just two rounds of surveys & did it iteratively, improving the surveys to dig into insights we wanted to get.
There were four things we were looking to gain from the survey:
- Purchase Dependencies: product-specific;
- Market understanding: brand penetration, brand positioning, competitor evaluation;
- Pain Points: product-specific + brand-specific;
- Expectations & needs + Brand Expectations + needs;
Recruitment: We chose people above the age of 18 till 55+ from different economic classes, occupations, regions of India, genders & cultures.
2,500 people were surveyed using Google forms.
Survey Design:
We organized the survey into three segments.
- The first segment gathered basic respondent profiles and purchasing dependencies.
- The second focused on brand penetration and market competition,
- The third delved into product-related pain points and expectations.
Our research, guided by Orient team inputs, focused on four key product categories: Fans, Lights, Grinders/Geysers/Heaters/Irons, and Switches.
After the first round of surveying (~3days), we reviewed and improved the form by changing and adding a few more questions.
After the surveys, I analyzed all data points for patterns and themes and chose the most impactful ones and created a survey report.
Desk Research:
We covered all major competition and created product specific Competition Analysis Reports. This aimed to understand competition and learn from their offerings.
End Of Quantitative Phase:
The Surveys and the Quantitative Analysis generated broad level insights and formed a pre-mature product understanding in user expectations, pain points and needs. Now, we conduct qualitative analysis to confirm our assumptions and dig deeper!
Qualitative: Interviews & Field Observations:
Interviews:
User Interviews:
Methodology: During COVID lockdowns, we conducted user interviews via Google Meet at scheduled times, interviewing 150 people over one week (approximately 30–40 per day). Three team members conducted 10–15 interviews daily, each lasting 10–15 minutes. We had a question template but focused on contextual interviewing, diving deep into topics based on user responses.
Goals: The interviews focused on profiling, opinions on Orient as a brand, competitor evaluation, and product-specific needs and pain points.
Post Interviews: After each day’s interviews, I compiled data in an Excel sheet. Mid-week, we reviewed processes and discussed challenges. Finally, we filtered inputs to create a report segmenting consumers and building user personas.
Business Interviews:
To get an insight on the various product features that could match with user expectations & make consumers understand our value proposition, we conducted interviews with sales managers of various Orient products.
We conducted 10 interviews with straightforward questions like the ones above & concluded by creating a synthesis document.
Field Observation:
We visited offline retail stores (non-Orient and Orient) in pairs, five days a week during peak hours, observing customers buying appliances. This provided critical insights into their journey from exploration to purchase decision. We noted customer types, journeys, desired features, and brand/product expectations. This helped identify and validate purchase triggers, both product and brand-related. Additionally, we spoke with salespersons to evaluate competitors’ unique selling points, customer priorities, and product-related misunderstandings.
Research Findings and Analysis:
We made multiple reports that enclosed findings from surveys, interviews & competition analysis. But it was important to condense a lot of information into an impactful, direct & easy-to-read, overview data report.
Consumer Segmentation:
Research Findings:
- All consumers could be fit into a grid based on their awareness of Orient’s product offerings and their engagement with our brand.
- This is important as it gives us clarity in defining the type of interaction we want to prioritize.
Meaning: If you look at the grid, there are only 9 combinations of users that exist. Based on our business needs for this design exercise, we want to focus on either “increasing our brand presence: get a new person to Orient: converting a Brand Agnostic person who is unaware of Orient offerings and design for this person’s requirements and needs!” or “Better create brand retention: design for a returning consumer”
This is helpful as this focuses our design (which is great) and also this is type of user has the highest probability of converting!
3. We also establish other categories of consumer prioritizations in Secondary and Tertiary.
User Personas:
Using the segmentation we devised, we crafted User Personas for each of the nine consumer types. These personas aimed to encapsulate the user’s overall mental image, including their goals, roles, emotions, psychology, and background. This approach facilitated a user-centric focus during website design.
This process aided in:
- Identifying Accessibility Issues: Uncovering language and technological barriers; notably, a significant portion of users were Hindi-speaking. Consequently, it became imperative to design the website in both Hindi and English, a crucial enhancement from its previous availability only in English.
- Establishing Information Hierarchies: Especially for the Product Display pages, we established found product specific data points to be prioritised over others to give a better UX. For example: speed, price and rating is something people look for when picking fans. Color, price, speed and rating is what they look for in Coolers. Hence, we could tailor the UI based on product categories offering a personalised experience.
- Brand Positioning: Establishing UI guidelines for the website, colour, font etc!
Category Triggers:
This was a synthesis of product-specific learnings from consumer interviews & competition analysis about: when the product purchase/selection happens, what factors impact the purchase. This was most crucial for the payment page and PLP’s(Product Listing Page’s) UX writing. These triggers helped us prepare copy, put the right filters, craft user journeys, and worked towards sales conversions!
This was a non-exhaustive list and we were always adding to it as and how we discovered more of a particular product.
Journey Mapping:
We created typical Journey Maps for all 9 types of consumers. It led from the discovery -> awareness -> consideration -> decision stage. These helped in directing user attention, creating user flows, and more!
Phase II: UI Design
I was responsible for designing the UI for Product Display Pages and the “Fan Specific” Product Page.
My designs were approved, audited and finally sent for A/B testing with other product categories’ design pages. The data on their efficacy is unknown.
Closing Statement:
The website was developed and recently launched, visit it here: https://shop.orientelectric.com/
This was a very comprehensive project where I lead UXR to UI Design and deployment and learnt a lot! Please feel free to reach out and ask any questions you may have!
