Crafted for Performance
Finding the balance between conversion optimisation and maintaining brand integrity.
Background
R.M.Williams came to our team with a clear goal in mind: help them learn about their customers. Find out what they like, how they prefer to shop and what guides their decisions.
Conversion improvement would come naturally as we use data to guide our design—but our purpose was primarily to learn.
The Research
We immediately set about getting to know their customers. To do this, we performed a deep quantitative and qualitative analysis of the website to understand what customers are doing when shopping online and why.
The Quant
Our data analysis was comprehensive. We uncovered high- and low-performing journeys, different behaviours by device type, how new visitors shop differently to returning ones and much, much more.
The Qual
Talking to real people! We did both moderated and unmoderated testing to uncover usability issues, to understand what influenced customer's decisions and to really get to know who R.M.'s customers are.
I also methodically evaluated the site against a set of conversion criteria (a heuristic evaluation) to see what else might be causing friction on the site.
The last step was to look across the ecommerce landscape—competitors and other retailers to understand where R.M.Williams deviated from the norm, and to see if anyone had novel ways of solving problems already identified.
The Result
And the end of our research we knew how people behaved, why they made the decisions they did and what was preventing them from buying. We also had hundreds of data-validated experiment ideas ready to go.
After presenting our findings, we worked with the team at R.M.Williams to prioritise a list of experiments.
Experiments and Outcomes
For the next two years we designed and executed experiments that helped guide the design direction of the R.M.Williams website. We helped improve navigation, filtering, size guides, size selection and the checkout process.
Our tests also informed where they should (or shouldn't) invest their money as we explored the impact of:
"Shop the look" tools
Video content
Buy-now-pay-later methods
In-store stock levels
As with every experimentation program, we had plenty of winning tests and plenty of losers. Some of the losing tests were among my favourites as they challenged our assumptions and taught us more about their customers than a winning test ever could.
While I can't share everything, below are some select examples with interesting results.
Example 1: Size selection simplified
We hypothesised that the existing size selector was adding friction for customers in 2 ways:
They couldn’t quickly see if their size was in stock
It was adding an additional step when adding an item to their cart
My solution was a simple format test: bringing the boot sizes out of the dropdown and onto the page, while also making it abundantly clear which sizes were in stock:
Current Experience
New design
This small change had a huge impact on the way people behaved—it more than doubled the number of customers selecting their size! We also saw a significant increase in the number of people adding to their cart.
A simple test with a big outcome and an important piece of knowledge gained: having sizes visible on the page adds a little nudge to get customers thinking about the next step.
Example 2: Checkout optimisation—or not!
This is one of my favourite tests we did on the site. Again, a very simple test with a big outcome—only this one lost!
We set out to remove what we thought was a redundant step in the checkout process:
Current Journey
After adding an item to the cart, customers are shown the "minicart" containing all their items. They click "View bag and checkout".
Next is the Shopping Bag page, where again they see all their items. They scroll down and click "Checkout".
From here they can complete their purchase.
Step 2 seemed unneseccary—they've just seen all their items in the minicart, why do they need to see them again? Why not just go straight to the checkout?
After looking around at a number of other retailers, we noticed a common pattern: the main button in Step 1 would go straight to the checkout, and a small text link was provided for users who want that extra step in the Shopping Bag page.
Seemed straightforward enough. Let's test it!
New Journey
Conclusion
Over two years I worked closely with the team at R.M.Williams to iteratively improve their site and learn about their customers. They trusted me to deliver designs that maintained their premium aesthetic and brand integrity.
Looking back over the 30 or so tests we ran, I can confidently say we learned an enormous amount and helped shape the direction of their website. The data from our experiments helped prevent costly mistakes and guided them towards a best-in-class ecommerce experience.
