ux content for Ready Store product pages
Overview
Ready Store is an emergency preparedness retailer that provides customers with supplies like MREs (Meal Ready-to-Eat), food storage, and emergency supplies. When I joined the marketing team, the Ready Store's online sales were declining, and they wanted to understand how they could improve web sales for their food storage products.
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In order to understand how we might increase online sales, I conducted research via a survey sent out to current customers to learn more about how they were shopping for emergency preparedness products online. The survey gathered over 100 responses, and after analyzing the results, I learned that users were hesitant to buy freeze-dried and dehydrated foods because they were unsure what the food looked like, how it tasted, and how to use it after it had been reconstituted.
The solution I created for this customer concern was a library of over 40 product videos of the Ready Store's top-selling freeze-dried and dehydrated foods. The videos demonstrated how to reconstitute and use the food in everyday meal planning and cooking. These videos were placed on corresponding product pages so customers could see what the food looked like as they browsed the website. Product pages that included a product video saw a 15% increase in online sales.
PROJECT PROCESS & DETAILS
Research
The Ready Store marketing team wanted to develop a solution to increase online sales and reverse the decline they had seen in sales the previous quarter. I began this project by researching the company's products and created a survey to ask customers about their experience both using the online store and their experience shopping for emergency preparedness supplies. The survey included 10 questions about the users' experience with the website, shopping for food storage, and familiarity with the products being sold on the website. The survey was created in Qualtrics and was distributed by sending it out in an email to the Ready Store's email list, as well as posted as a pop-up on the website. The survey was open for 4 weeks and collected over 100 responses.
Data Analysis
Survey responses were analyzed thematically, grouping similar responses in an affinity map. The biggest insight gained from the survey results was that customers felt hesitant to purchase dehydrated and freeze-dried foods online because they were unsure of how the food would look and taste. This also limited their understanding of how they might use the products in their cooking.
Content Solution
I produced a library of over 40 product videos, including script writing, filming, starring in, and editing the videos in Adobe Premiere Pro. Videos were created for top-selling products on the website and demonstrated the process of reconstituting the food (i.e. adding water to the dried or dehydrated food) and showing what it looked like when it was ready to eat. so users had a better idea of the product before buying it. The marketing team then performed A/B testing on the product pages that had videos added to see if conversion rates increased on those pages compared to when they didn't have videos. The result was a 10% increase in online sales for pages that had videos.
REFLECTION
This project was one of my first experiences with data collection and user research. If I were to do this project again, I would want to dig deeper into what would help users better understand how to use the freeze-dried and dehydrated foods they were buying online and use that information to more closely inform the content of the videos. The videos stuck to a basic script that demonstrated how to reconstitute the food, explaining that the food held nearly the same nutritional value as its fresh counterparts. While this addressed concerns over what the food looked like, the videos didn't address any aspects of cooking with the food. I would want to expand this video library to include videos about cooking with the food, and perhaps offering additional content with recipes using the Ready Store's products in order to address the user's concerns about how to use the food in their cooking.