Reece is Australia’s largest supplier of plumbing and bathroom products.
This case study will take a look at Reece's e-commerce store and determine how to address visualisation pain points, to help customers find confidence in their selection process by having the ability to order vanity samples* online.
*Sample orders will be fulfilled by 3 suppliers and posted directly to customers
We discussed our research direction and gathered our assumptions in Miro.
Our white post-its summarised our collected thoughts that helped us identify common subject matters to address in our topic map.
We conducted a SWOT analysis to investigate Reece's internal strengths and weaknesses as well as external factors (opportunities and threats) that effected current market conditions/environment.
Our sources included results from:
• our own survey with 28 participants for renovations and home builds
• Master Builders (COVID Industry Forecasts, Building and Construction Industry Forecast 2019)
• HIA (New Housing Forecasts - June 2020); and
• IBIS World (House Construction in Australia - Industry Data)
The Feature Analysis (below) highlights Reece's offerings against competitors (those we recognised in the industry who offered plumbing and bathroom services).
Reece provide a wide range of features and resources to aid customers with their bathroom renovation/build, however we found some inconsistencies that affected their brand identity.
This made us question how the benefits of these features were overlooked and how could we bring this to the limelight to address customers pain points around visualisation.
We approached a task analysis on each competitor's website to see how customers completed vanity purchases online, and analysed how complex tasks were broken down into sequences of smaller steps or actions attributing to final purchase decisions.
Key findings:
• Social media links allows customers to share/add/like/favourite any vanity selection
• Vanities were available for online purchase with a return policy
• Bathroom Direct offers FREE sample chips and colour swatches
• Variety of pay options eg. Afterpay, PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, etc
• Customer reviews on website boost brand and product integrity
• Product specifications were overwhelming and unclear
• Photos and images ranged from low to high quality (inconsistent)
In 6 days we led 24 user interviews and 5 stakeholder interviews. We collated our data and mapped our findings onto an affinity board, you can view our board here.
Participants where those who completed our Google survey and those we reached out to on Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, Instagram and other personal networks.
We interviewed people between the ages of 25 - 70 who were renovators, new builders or professionals (designers and builders).
Categories and highlights are examined below:
• Inspiration & Research
• Decision Making
• Sampling (pros & cons); and
• Showroom Experiences (pros & cons)
Our persona we identified by taking snippets from our industry research and those we interviewed.
We took common scenarios from our research and completed a journey map to examine Donna's relationship with products/brands at certain touch points, considering time and different channels.
Our design studios are always fun, we ran a design sprint addressing two 'how might we' timing 8 mins for each.
As this project had no budget and a tight deadline, we prioritised features from our ideation that were high impact on user values but low effort for Reece to implement, such as the current bathroom homepage, bathroom product screen and social influences (see below).
We held 5 usability testings and iterated according to feedback, below are the key points we considered with our final design:
• Increase vanity sales by increasing usability on Reece's current website, and allowing users to order samples online
• Making the selection process easier as the available features are brought forward
• Increasing the ability to visualise to grow consumer leads
- through the use of imagery and product pairings
- giving the option to purchase samples
- relevant product pairings
We wanted to transfer Reece's 5 star qualities onto their digital platform with an intuitive and more sophisticated modern style (see our final design below).
• 3D Planner Refresh
Turning this into a more user-friendly tool would help customers be more involved in achieving fulfilment for the bathroom space in their home.
• Link products from Instagram directly to Reece's website
Due to Reece's mass following on Instagram, linking products directly to Reece's e-commerce store would generate more traffic and sale.
• Catalogue styling showcased on Reece's website
Reece currently offers this via PDF download, we suggest turning this into a digital online catalogue/magazine format will showcase Reece's quality styling and visual themes.
