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How using research to uncover user questions and design to answer them helped us keep our customers.
How using research to uncover user questions and design to answer them helped us keep our customers.
I was informed that the CX team has been dealing with a growing number of customer inquiries regarding basic product details, trial periods, and warranty information - details that are already available on the page. I had to investigate.
Project timeline: 2 weeks
I took the initiative to identify and understand the underlying causes of these questions. I researched and designed solutions and A/B tested them to measure their effectiveness.
Product Designer (myself)
Front-end Developer
Copywriter
When product pages don't answer user questionsUsers want answers to these 5 questions when shopping online:
Unfortunately for us, we only answered one question: “How much does it cost”.
The other answers, although available on the page, weren't immediately clear and demanded excessive effort from our users. Consequently, this often left our customer service team to address these queries, or led to users leaving the site without returning.
Bringing it all together to Anticipate customer questionsIt is said you have no more than 10 seconds to make an impression on your customer or they will most likely leave. A successful product page should:
By successfully following these guidelines and listening to our users, I was able to improve our product pages in a significant way and save our Customer Experience team a lot time:
Engagement
Rate
+38%
Bounce
Rate
-8%
Customer Service
Inquiries*
-38%
*Inquiries related to the customer questions uncovered in this research project.
Yes, you read that correctly. That's exactly what we experienced. What I love about UX design is its ability to offer solutions without the need for extensive research and development. This was one of those instances.
How much does it weight, how big is Queen size, will it help with my back, what's it made off, what are your warranty and return policies?
The answer to these questions were not easy to find, even internally. Users must feel very frustrated and we need to address this quickly.
I decided to use usertesting.com to quickly test my assumptions with participants and measure how long it takes them to find the information using the following script:
The presentation of information was disorganized, leading to an excessive cognitive burden for users. When basic product details are not readily accessible, customers are less likely to engage further or consider making a purchase.
remembered seeing something about a warranty or trial but some users mixed-up the years between the two.
could answer the question about the mattress feel, although they didn’t always get it right.
could remember roughly what the materials were but couldn’t tell about the benefits of each.
I looked at the scroll maps, click maps and move maps in Hotjar and it did reveal the pages were getting low engagement and interaction with only 25% of users scrolling 50% of the page. I believe users are not finding the information they're looking for quickly enough.
Similar results were seen on mobile. While this could be associated to other issues such as page length, I decided to stay focused on the user's first impression and answer their most commonly asked questions first.
Armed with the above data, user tests results and customer service team reports, we finally have a plan of action:
An effective solution will streamline user interaction, significantly reducing the volume of inquiries to customer service. This improvement should enhance user engagement on the page, decrease bounce rates, prolong session times, and ultimately lead to deeper exploration of our content by users.
Our objective was to achieve an optimal blend of content quantity and strategic placement, ensuring that the call-to-action (CTA) remains prominent without compromising usability, especially on mobile devices.
I considered implementing tabs or accordions as they offer a user-friendly way to organize content into digestible sections, effectively reducing cognitive load.
After multiple rounds of ideation, we built a design solution that not only looked visually appealing but also ensured essential information was just a tap away.
I conducted a new user test on usertesting.com, applying it to the updated design, similar to the previous test we ran.
remembered seeing the warranty. While they didn't open it, they know it's there. 70% improvement!
could answer the question about the mattress feel. It's at the end of the short summary, in bold. 180% improvement!
could remember the materials and used the tab to learn more. Others know it's readily available. 47% improvement!
(When compared to control in A/B tests)
support_agentCustomer Service
Inquiries
-38%
move_itemBounce
Rate
-8%
scrollable_headerScrolled
Percentage
+12%
highlight_mouse_cursorCustomer
Engagement
+38%
This project was a fulfilling experience for me. It was brief yet had a significant impact and required minimal development effort. The customer service team is notably appreciative, seeing a 38% decrease in inquiries about warranty, shipping and some product related questions. The response from customers has been positive, as indicated by increased heatmap activity in the upper section of the page. While there's room for future enhancements, particularly in improving scroll rates, that's a challenge I look forward to tackling in another project.
Thank you for reading.
