SHOPLOCAL
A responsive website created to help users find small, local businesses and events in their community.
THE PROBLEM
Local businesses do not receive the same amount of exposure as large corporations, making it hard for potential customers to find them
Research shows that one of the best ways to help the environment and support economic growth is to shop locally, whether that be going to the family owned restaurant around the corner or choosing to participate in community events. However, these businesses and events tend to be overshadowed by big chain stores or large organizations with substantial marketing budgets.
ShopLOCAL aims to level the playing field by offering a centralized website where local business, services, and events can gain more exposure - and, in turn, more customers.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
3 week long conceptual case study
USER GOAL
To find businesses and events quickly, as well as filter results according to their interests or needs
BUSINESS GOAL
Ensure small businesses gain exposure, and market subscription-paying businesses to drive up profits and maintain users’ attention.
MY ROLE
Lead UX Designer and Researcher
As the designer leading this conceptual case study over three weeks, I ideated early concepts, ran design sprints, completed 2 rounds of user research, and delivered the final design assets.
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
User research was conducted to understand the current attitudes and habits of potential ShopLOCAL users
Using Google Forms, a user research survey was sent out to assess customers' values, shopping habits, and tools used to find where to shop.
From our research, we’ve found that users generally find shopping at local businesses personally important to them, but they find their current methods lacking in some way or another.
According to survey results below, most of our potential users found these businesses through social media, common search engines or word of mouth - with all of those tools either ineffective or too decentralized for the users' taste.
BREAKING DOWN THE
PROCESS
After conducting foundational research to gain insight on prospective users' problem areas, it is time to move onto the next steps in the design process.
After learning about potential users' pain points and identifying problems, I moved on to the next steps in my design process: ideating and creating prototypes.
I began by creating paper wireframes of website pages, and then translating my best ideas to responsive digital wireframes, shown below.
I then presented these wireframes to other designers, and received the constructive feedback needed to improve my designs and create my high fidelity mockups and prototype. Now we move on to the next step: testing.
Using the prototype I created, I used Maze to conduct an unmoderated remote usability test to see whether my designs were effective and accomplished the goals set for the project.
Based on the test data received, shopLOCAL's most important features (searching, filtering results, leaving reviews, and basic navigation) had an average completion rate of 90% and misclick rate of 4.2%. Not only that, but the website's NPS score was 60%, meaning most participants would recommend shopLOCAL to a friend.
Because of these largely positive results and time constraints on the project, it was decided that this prototype was effective enough to accomplish both user and business goals, and could therefore be handed off to developers as the final deliverables.
KPIS TO LOOK OUT FOR
Conversion rates
The conversion rate of shopLOCAL should be monitored, since conversion rates measure the amount of users that complete tasks that accomplish shopLOCAL's goals, such as registering their business or visiting and rating a business.
Task success rate
Task success rates are important to observe because they're essentially a measure of how user friendly shopLOCAL's user flows are. If the majority of users are able to successfully complete a task, such as leaving a review, then the design of the site is successful.
Time on task
On top of completing a task successfully, we want users to be able to complete it as quickly and efficiently as possible. Taking note of time on task allows us to improve flows that are taking too much effort on the user's part and take steps to make them easier to complete.
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
LESSONS LEARNED
What could be improved upon in future design iterations
Given the time constraints on this project, there is still much that can be improved or expanded upon in further design sprints. For one, search filter content could change depending on categories of search - much like other competitors such as Yelp have done. In addition to that, the business and user sigh up flows could be refined in order to increase conversion rates when visiting the site.
However, overall, the goals and main task features for this weeks long design solution were met, and the results from testing were largely positive. Therefore, it is fair to say that these designs satisfied both users and shopLOCAL stakeholders.