Case Study
BH e-Commerce portal
Baker Hughes is a major player in energy technology industry. The company develops and deploys the most advanced technologies to serve the energy & industrial companies looking for more efficient and reliable solutions.
Their e-Commerce platform is a key market place for their sub-brands with different product lines and their clients to know and buy specialized gears as per their needs.
Role
Lead UX Designer
Tools used
Project year
2024 - 2025
Objectives
Identify the business requirements for all the product lines, recommend the best solution with UX rationals and revamp the portal to improve the e-Commerce experience that matches the business goals and user's mental model.
The start
Though I had a high level objectives to Enhance Usability, Improve Product Visibility, Increase Sales, Considering the involvement of different brands and product lines, I started to understand more about the business and personas involved from the Stakeholders..
Research
Stakeholder Envisioning
Before I got on to a discussion with Stakeholders, I created an interview protocol and prepared a questionnaire for an effective and focus driven discussion.
In mean time I reached out to internal contacts to gather a list of key Stakeholders and experties from all the product lines with various domain experties including product SMEs, Sales, Marketting, Customer care and Channel manager. Involved a couple of team mates to support on the interview process, note taking and to keep a check on the time for each interview session.
5
Product Lines
22
Interview Sessions
26
Stakeholders Interviewed
All the valuable inputs were collected using Figjam. They were segregated under different buckets like Business Goals & Strategies, Key Products, Challenges, Painpoints, Users, Competitors etc.,
Persona
As I went through the discussion with Stakeholders across different product lines, it all worked almost in the similar way. From the existing sales data I got to know, about 90% of the users are Channel Partners who interact with the portal day in and out. Only less than 10% of the direct users are trying to access the portal due to lack of product knowledge.
That made me to end up with 2 personas from the front end perspective, one from the Channel Partner side who can be an admin or one who places order and the other one as a common user.
Competitive Analysis
I belive it is always good to experiment and know the market out there, before reinventing the wheel. Along with the personas, I also collected information on the business specific competitors and similar players in the market, to set a benchmark.
Analysed on certain factors like
- What is the current trend in the market?
- What features do they currently provide?
- What is the overall customer journey or process?
- What could have been better?
- Is there room for new features?
Key Take Aways
As a result of stakeholder interview, I planned out a workout session to analyse the points and summarise the key insights.
Improve product visibility & efficient navigation
User specific product recommendations
Provide clear communication on system status
Streamline process on order, quote & registration
Increase overall speed & performance
Apart from the key points, business was also interested to have some additional features..
High Level Flow
After analysing the existing structure and a lot of discussions for new additions, I arrived at a high level flow for the overall portal.
With further deep diving into the each step, I developed this Information Architecture, which really helped the team to plan the overall design and development.
Challenge
- There were too many sub levels in the product hierarchy and features which really had to be simplified for the user to navigate easily with minimal clicks.
- Convincing Stakeholders who want most of the links upfront on the home page.
From there, I Started to prioritize the primary or frequent tasks for a user and the other good to haves. Made sure the grouping and terms matches with the users mental model.
User Interview
Once i got a sufficient understanding about the Flow, Business and Personas, I generated a report to present to the Stakeholders and confirm on the points collected earlier.
Post that I planned for user interviews, the similar way it happened for the Stakeholder envisioning.
Parallelly, a first cut wireframe was created based on the inputs gathered so far and I used them in the user interviews to see if it matches the mental model.
As expected, the flow almost remained the same, however, there were quite a few difference in the users expectations. In the virtual interview session, I asked the users to walk us through their day to day work in the system.
Based on the key inputs from the users, I brainstormed with the team internally. Refined the user flows based their working model and iterated the wireframes to bridge the users needs and business requirement .
After our connect with the users, we got hold of the flow and UI. Now its time to prioritize the features to take up for design and development.
Visual Design
As the Design System was already available, I refered the brand guidelines and components from the same. Initially I created unique screens like, Home page, Product page and Checkout page, and I had them tested with the users. Positive feedbacks turned out the happy faces in the team 🙂
Once the clear path is set, I started the design sprint and worked along the same team of 2 designers, to deliver the features based on the priority. I made sure all the possible scenarios were covered for desktop and mobile responsive screens and documented the same.
Home Page
With simplified navigation and clear product display, users were able to find their products in less time.
Product Page
Product description was more crisp & informative, to check the stock availability, price breakdown and earlier possible ship date. In addition to that, the page was designed in such a way that the product is taking 50% of the page width for better visibility. Other details like detailed description and supportive documents were provided under the prime realestate.
Checkout Page
Have implemented a stepper approach with single page scroll. This improved the ease of access to different data sections and know the progress.
Ordered Items
User was able to view the status of their orders and track each item under each order which would have different delivery dates. Also, as a point of business, provided a CTA "Buy again" which also helped the users to re-order the same set of goods for the next time.
Credit Card Payment
Due to business constraints, credit card feature was not made available for the users to purchase online. As this could be a key factor for sales and blocker for users payment flexibility, I connected with one of the Head of Product-line to know more insights on this restriction. With our discussion considering multiple factors, it took a considerable time to decide on this feature.
Finally that discussion had an impact! Credit card mode of payment was made available on this portal with a limitation of financial slabs based on the chanel partner's profile and order price, which really hiked the sales on this platform.
Result
⬆ 68% Increase in the online sales
🔻 32% Reduction in product searching time.
🔻 54% Reduction in the Checokout time
🔻 18% Reduction in customer care - order status enquiry.
⬆ 16% Increase in registration rate
Let's work together to make a difference.
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