Website Redesign UX Case Study Part I: Research & Design
#UI #UX
Project Timeline
Sep 2021 - Apr 2022
My role
UI/UX
Tools
Pencils & Papers, Google Docs, Google forms, Google Meet, Miro, Kardsort, Figma, Maze
Deliverables
Empathy map, persona, user journey, user flow, task flow, wireframes, design system, prototype, case study
https://www.damanwoo.com/node/93085
I believe most people who have ever been to IKEA enjoy the atmosphere. However, does IKEA Taiwan’s virtual store provide the same vibes and experiences as its physical stores? “Due to Covid-19, I’d better stay away from crowds. Let me shop for IKEA products online.” Before Taiwan’s pandemic outbreak in May 2021, I visited IKEA to shop for a dining table but didn’t purchase it on the spot. When Taiwan reached the Level 3 epidemic alert, I tried to buy the table online. However, the whole process didn’t go smoothly. This experience inspired me to redesign IKEA Taiwan’s website.
After deciding to redesign IKEA Taiwan’s website, I explored IKEA’s websites for other countries and discovered that countries like the US, Japan and Singapore have cleaner and more consistent templates. Many of the usability issues on IKEA Taiwan’s website are no longer present on the websites in other countries. Initially, I thought this was because IKEA Taiwan hadn’t been updated to the newer global template. However, I later discovered that IKEA Taiwan and IKEA Hong Kong are managed by Dairy Farm Group, a Hong Kong retail company, and are not necessarily required to follow the global template. When redesigning IKEA Taiwan’s website, I kept the global template in mind since it is more user-friendly. At the same time, I also considered Taiwanese consumers’ shopping behaviours to adapt the global template to better suit their needs.
The experience of shopping on IKEA Taiwan’s website doesn’t match the experience of shopping in its physical stores.
When planning user research, I wanted to understand IKEA’s vision and goals because it is a global organization, so I conducted secondary research to understand its background. A SWOT analysis was used to identify the strengths, weaknesses, and future opportunities of IKEA Taiwan’s website, while a competitor analysis was employed to pinpoint good features of competitors’ websites and how they address problems. I also researched IKEA’s target audiences and used this as the basis for recruiting interviewees. Lastly, I examined IKEA Taiwan’s and other countries’ websites for obvious usability issues.
After completing the secondary research, I proceeded with conducting primary research. Some qualitative methods I used included surveys and interviews, while the quantitative method I adopted was card sorting.
Below is the SWOT analysis evaluating IKEA Taiwan’s competitive position.
IKEA Taiwan’s competitors include Nitori, Hola, TRPlus, Working House, and MUJI, among others. Compared to its competitors, IKEA is considered affordable while offering great and simple designs. The target audience is likely to be cost-conscious individuals who value design and don’t mind assembling DIY furniture. IKEA Taiwan’s brand positioning should also influence the UI of its website, which should reflect its great and simple design ethos.
After completing the analysis of IKEA Taiwan’s competitors, I compiled the Competitor Metrics. All the competitors examined use a navigation bar instead of a hamburger menu. Additionally, they all display the shipping cost on their specific product pages.
In addition to analysing IKEA Taiwan’s competitors, I also researched other e-commerce sites such as Sephora, Etsy, John Lewis, H&M, Pinkoi and Shopee for potential features that IKEA could adopt. For instance, as shown in the screenshots, both Sephora and John Lewis use a mega menu for their navigation bars. According to NNG, mega menus “are an excellent design choice for accommodating a large number of options or for revealing lower-level site pages at a glance” (Nielsen & Li, 2017).
Some of the current usability issues I discovered and analysed are described below, based on the three usability quality components: learnability, efficiency, and satisfaction. Click here to see the final prototype that addresses these issues.
Goal: gather basic demographic information and answers to close-ended questions in order to reduce the time required for an interview. After conducting usability tests for IKEA Taiwan and IKEA US websites, surveys were also administered to assess satisfaction rates.
Goal: find out how IKEA customers shop online, what they feel works well, where they think there are issues, and how they believe things could be improved.
Some techniques used:
For the qualitative data from surveys and interviews, I used thematic analysis (affinity mapping) and rainbow spreadsheets to analyse the data and identify common themes.
We can see from the results that the satisfaction rate for IKEA US is higher than that for IKEA Taiwan. Furthermore, the rating for the statement "I agree that the IKEA US website is easier to use than the IKEA Taiwan site" is 7.8. Therefore, it is evident that the global template needs to be considered when redesigning IKEA Taiwan’s website.
From the usability test for IKEA Taiwan’s website, a few interviewees became lost when trying to find the 74x74cm black-brown Lerhamn table, which was the same issue I encountered. Therefore, I decided to perform card sorting to reorganise the information architecture (IA) for product categories.
Moreover, most of the interviewees stated that they prefer to shop for large or expensive items, such as furniture, on a laptop or desktop. Therefore, the redesign will begin with a laptop/desktop breakpoint.
Going back to the hypotheses, the surveys and interviews revealed that out of the five interviewees, only one has ever shopped on IKEA Taiwan’s website. She lives in a rural area of Taiwan where there is no IKEA store.
The reasons why the others didn’t shop online were as follows:
Therefore, the hypothesis "if IKEA provides seamless experiences, the increased online users from the pandemic will stay" is proven to be true. Additionally, according to the interviews, people who live in cities without an IKEA store shop more on IKEA Taiwan’s website.
Lastly, four out of five interviewees expressed a desire to see more sales information on IKEA US’ website.
Goal: to generate a better IA for product categories
Points to note:
The above information were taken on September 1, 2021
For the card sorting results, I used card sorting analysis to identify which cards were more easily miscategorised. The percentages in white or yellow represent those that were more prone to miscategorisation.
New cards the testers created were:
Only 20% of the participants categorized "shopping bag/trolley" under its correct category, "leisure/travel."
I have reworked the entire section of product categories, but here I will only show the detailed IA for "tables/sofas/chairs" and "kitchen" to demonstrate the difference. I am still using four layers to categorise products (products > tables/sofas/chairs > tables > dining tables), even though IKEA US uses three layers, because I plan to change the hamburger menu to mega menus. The changes are listed below.
From the research and analysis, three pain points were identified.
Three personas were created based on research and aggregated empathy maps, with Alice Lee as the primary persona and Kevin Chen and Belinda Wu as the secondary personas.
Meet Alice, a 27-year-old pharmacist with a moderate income who is cost-conscious and enjoys taking advantage of sales.
Meet Kevin, a 30-year-old engineer who is cautious when making purchase decisions.
Meet Belinda, a 25-year-old automotive designer who visits furniture websites not only for shopping but also to gather inspiration.
I picked Alice as my primary persona because, according to Santander, Taiwanese consumers are loyal to brands but also sensitive to price. Alice aligns more closely with IKEA Taiwan's target audience.
From the research and thematic analysis, I have created three aggregated empathy maps for persona building. Here, I am only showing the one for the primary persona, Alice Lee.
Scenario: Alice has too many things on her desk, so she needs a new dining table. The table she is looking for should be cheap, stylish, offer good value for money, and fit in her studio. Since she lives in Yilan, a suburban area with fewer furniture options, she decides to shop online.
Goals: to save time and effort by avoiding the need to go to the actual store to shop.
Alice, a pharmacist who seeks efficiency when shopping, needs to quickly access sales information and complete the shopping process in order to gain satisfaction and save time.
"How might we" and "user stories" were the tools I used for ideating redesign ideas after the point of view statement was defined.
Below are the sitemaps, before and after. Some changes are based on IKEA US' website, while others are based on the interviews.
Below are the visuals for the nav bar and footer, showcasing the current and redesigned versions (with reference to IKEA US' website as well).
Following is the task flow for looking for sales, finding a Lerhamn table, checking out and tracking the order.
Following is the user flow of Alice, our primary persona.
I drew some preliminary ideas before moving on to the final wireframes.
The prototype was developed in Figma after the mockups and wireframes were created.
Below are some screenshots of the current and redesigned IKEA Taiwan website, referring back to the current usability issues listed above.
Below are screenshots of the highlighted features added to the redesigned website.
With the design system, since IKEA US is already doing a good job, I gathered key elements mainly from the website and other sources like annual reports, etc. Here is also an interesting video about IKEA's design system, Skapa.
