Creating a strategy for the unexpected
Recently, I’ve been looped back into a client project due to COVID-19. The client is a large retailer and most of their sales come from in store customer purchases. Due to the virus, many of their customers are protecting themselves (which is a good thing) by not venturing into the malls to shop. However, this translates into a huge sales decline for the client. Unfortunately, they did not realize how having a website tailored to specific segments of users would be. Usually, we don’t factor pandemics and viruses into our design strategy and that is no fault of our own. We’re not faced with pandemics regularly on such a large scale and you can only prepare for it but so much.
So what does this mean? This means that my team and I have to create a strategy that will increase their online sales while also creating personalized email funnels that will help drive the customers to making purchases more frequently.
Some of problems that I’m already having to factor in are:
The frequency in which the emails will be sent out
How to make them personalized in a way that aligns with the website experience
How to re-design and organize the website in a way that will provide the customers with the same shopping quality they would receive in store.
How can the team and I go about solving this or at least trying to solve this?
We need to understand who their main customer segments are and how the brand fits into their lives more. We will be able to use user interviews via surveys along with analytics to track open rates and click rates to gain some insights. However, to make sure the website will provide an experience similar to the one customers experience when they’re in store is a bit more complex. At the very least, we will need to determine:the equivalent of their in store experience
the features will provide that experience
if those features need to be automated or not
how will it need to be scaled over time
should it be scaled
if the customers prefer a more hands off or hands on approach regarding shopping assistance.
While I don’t have the answers to this yet, this is an interesting problem to solve. Honestly, that’s what makes this fun.
Overall, what I’m learning so far is that creating a strategy for new and unexpected factors requires you to look at primary problems in holistic and future state way. You have to factor in the business problems, business goals, user pain points, user goals, and development time while leaving enough room to re-route your solutions after a few rounds of trial & error. I will keep you updated on this as progresses.
Until next time, happy wireframing!