Leading customer research and product design at Patch Plants.

My role: End to end research and product design, including conducting early stage user research, journey mapping, UI and UX design, prototyping, user testing, A/B testing, strategic decision making.

01_Conversion optimisation
02_Improving our outdoors experience
03_Checkout
04_Website redesign
05_Online magazine

01. Conversion optimisation

In Q3 2021 my team were tasked with finding areas that would both have a significant impact on conversion and the customer experience on the website. We kicked off a research and design sprint to figure out the core areas of the experience that were painpoints for customers. The most commonly raised were:

• That many of our products were frequently in and out of stock and we didn’t have email when back in stock functionality;

• New customers couldn’t always find our care information and felt overwhelmed by the quantity of information on our product pages;

• Customers found our checkout process long and onerous (see section 3 - WIP).

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“There’s a plant I really want but you guys have been out of stock of it for ages…it’d be nice if I could sign up for a reminder”

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We ran a number of ideation and prioritisation sessions to see how we could solve these problems and ultimately came out with a prioritised list of problems and potential solutions that we worked through over the subsequent 6 months between other urgent project work. Each of the following were released as A/B tests until they had a positive impact and were rolled out to 100% of users. The main improvements we’ve made include:

• Introducing email when back in stock functionality (3% increase in conversion, we also started to see a benefit in terms of repeat rates but it’s early days measuring this. We saw 18.7% conversion from viewing the email to placing an order);

• Collapsing our care, quick facts and “about” sections in an accordion to make our product pages more scannable and less overwhelming (5.75% increase in product added);

• Adding user generated content “UCG” to our product carousels as card testing showed customers trusted customer imagery more than brand photos (3.3% increase in order complete).

02. Improving our outdoors experience

In Q2 2021 I was tasked with learning more about the customer jobs and painpoints of outdoor purchasing and gardening. Patch had started as an outdoor plant company but had pivoted to indoor plants because of high demand. They ultimately wanted to serve both markets as the outdoor market is almost 4 times larger than the indoor plant market. A key hypothesis was also that there was a large market of beginner to intermediate gardeners that were poorly served online (existing online players are focused on advanced gardeners with large product catalogues, poor curation and limited care guidance).

We used a number of different research methods, from qualitative interviews with outdoor customers, to onsite surveys, as well as diary studies that we ran with staff members to understand behaviours and needs. The key findings we made influenced our range and approach this year, in particular;

• We launched earlier, off the back of google search data for outdoor plants but also diary study feedback that customers were most excited about (and likely to invest in) their outdoors space in early spring. This led to 20% higher sales compared to what we’d expect based on search interest and the previous year’s sales;

• We adjusted the range with plants that fit the jobs we heard in customer research (e.g. we found that customers expected that outdoor plants serve multiple functions - not just looking good but being edible, or scented, providing privacy, or being good for pollinators). We introduced new feature icons to show people these special features with a 2.5% increase in product add;

• We worked on small amendments to increase confidence in buying outdoor plants after hearing that customers were far more worried about killing (and therefore investing) in outdoor plants. One of the most successful changes was introducing seasonality calendars that educated and managed expectations around seasonal change which led to a whopping 21.8% increase in order complete for the plants we included them on.

03. Checkout

As part of the conversion work outlined in section 1 we identified checkout as an opportunity area to improve conversion and the customer experience. Our checkout had a very high rate of drop out - even higher than the industry standard - and we frequently got feedback that:

• the checkout process felt long and onerous, exacerbated by poor visual hierarchy and large type and input fields;

• it included fields that customers considered unnecessary or unclear (e.g. volunteered attribution);

• customers were often unable to find the voucher input (especially on mobile);

• the delivery costs weren’t clear (till halfway through checkout);

• there was no express checkout which customers appreciate for speed and ease of checkout.

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“I don’t know if it’s me but the page just looks huge…it feels really repetitive”

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Much of this is work in progress but our broad plans were to:

• shorten checkout by removing a step (combining billing address and payment details), reducing the size of input fields, and streamlining information/inputs (progressive disclosure with accordions and information icons);

• test having Apple Pay in basket;

• collapse the order summary (and voucher input) and have it at the top of the page to avoid it getting lost;

• show the delivery cost throughout checkout.

Early changes condensing input fields and adjusting our delivery options to be easier to review and compare led to a 5% increase in conversion, the rest of the work is still in progress, with adding Apple Pay being the next step to be tested.

04. Website redesign

Shortly after I started at Patch in Q4 2020 I was tasked with updating the website to reflect their new visual identity. I worked closely with the creative lead to refine the brand language and to apply it to the website. The old design was tired, with little visual hierarchy. The only brand colour was a bright green that had poor contrast on buttons, page titles were very dominant and didn’t let the product imagery shine, and most typography was in caps and difficult to read. Buttons were also inconsistent and often oversized compared to other components.

We introduced a new button and type hierarchy as well as introducing new hero and title components that didn’t compete with our product imagery. The new design, along with some tweaks to contrast and button sizing led to a 3.4% increase in product add to bag, and 5.6% increase in average order value. Since implementing these changes we’ve also introduced more illustration onto the website to add character and delight, especially to things like errors, end of search results and empty bag.

05. Online magazine

In early 2021 I worked on early stage research looking into how customers found plant care information, and inspiration for decorating with plants. Patch wanted to see whether there was customer value in creating an online magazine or blog that would also have an SEO benefit. The research led us to believe that there was a need for easier to access, practical and trustworthy care information, as well as a source of inspiration that was more easily shoppable than Pinterest or Instagram.

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“I don’t find a good level of plant advice that often…I check a few places to find a common thread…[the advice] can be contradictory.”

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As we started to build the basic functionality of the magazine I conducted user testing to gather user feedback on our designs, paying particular attention to:

• how useful the content was (using real draft articles), did it solve our users’ problems?

• ease of navigation, including future functionality around tagging

• ease of reading, including type hierarchy, anchor links and text density/imagery

• ease of shopping and whether they found product placement intrusive/distracting

Phase 1 of the project was to build out individual articles to answer the direct customer need, use the articles in customer emails, and build our SEO rankings. Phase 2 (not yet built) is to build a magazine home page and navigation to allow customers to explore different types of articles (and discover them on our website). Some of our articles are now getting substantial views, solving customer problems and bringing new customers to the website. Check out one of our most popular articles - how to water here.