TERRA TOYS

Re-designing and simplifying a website performance of a locally owned toy store Terra Toys located in Austin, Texas

 

Client

Terra Toys

My Role

UX Designer/UX Researcher

Duration

2 weeks

Methods and tools

User Interviews, Competitive/Comparative Analysis, Card Sorting, User Persona, User flows, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability Testing, Google Drive, Figma, Optimal Workshop

 

Overview

Terra Toys is the largest toy store in Texas operating for over 40 years. They’re looking for ways to stay competitive in the current market and increase their website performance to drive more sales.

 

The Problem

Terra Toy's website is very cluttered and difficult to shop. It has poorly structured information architecture with an interface that is difficult to navigate. As a result, the site doesn’t assist the user to help find what they are looking for and therefore does not capture the in-store experience which is what constitutes the majority of its revenue.

The Solution

Re-design the look and feel of the current Terra Toys website and add functionality to improve the user's online shopping experience. This would help to make their online service more efficient.

Research

 

The main research objectives:

  • Understand how users make purchase decisions

  • Gather user feedback on the current website

  • Identify key problems in the current website to understand the pain points and areas of improvement in the live experience of the site.

  • Identify Terra Toy's competitors and evaluate strengths and weaknesses

User Interviews

I conducted 10x 1on1 user interviews. During these interviews, I asked open-ended questions and asked users to test the current website to learn as much as I could about their toy shopping experience and identify what the user's needs truly are and what frustrations and difficulties they have navigating the site.

Competitive & Comparative Analysis

Following user interviews, I started to research Terra Toy's direct and indirect competitors. 

My goal was to understand the toy market better and explore other potential features that might be included on our website. I also observed how competitors present and organize their products into categories.

The Persona

Based on Target user needs and goals I created my persona Alice and a scenario that helped me to understand how she will interact with the site in a given situation to complete given tasks.

“User needs a quick way to easily find a gift online and have an efficient checkout process to save time”

User Flows

Next, I wanted to learn how the users would be interacting with Terra Toy's website. I created two user flows for two key tasks. I wanted to see how my target user Alice would find a toy gift and how she would buy it going through the checkout process. It should be fast and easy.

Alice wants to find a gift toy for her 8-year-old son who loves music

Alice needs fast checkout to get a wrapped gift delivered right to her door

Low-fi Wireframes

  • 1. Landing Page

    Creating the trusty search bar

  • 2. Shop Products

    Creating a filtering system to showcase a broad range of items and improve the user experience.

  • 3. Product Page

    The ability to quickly add products to cart and/or wish list, as well as check out the product rating

  • 4. Cart

    Clear order summary

  • 5. Checkout

    Creating an option to choose the delivery option and choose the gift option

  • 6. Order confirmation

    Order status bar

User Testing

 

With user testing, it was my objective to validate what I already identified as impactful areas of focus and uncover any additional usability issues.

I conducted a usability test with five users. Each of the participants was asked to complete the following tasks. 

  • From the homepage show me how you would buy a piano instrument for an eight-year-old boy. 

  • Show me how you would sort results by price.

  • Find a roll-up piano and add it to the cart. 

  • Show me how you would quickly add a Monopoly game to the cart 

  • Purchase products using checkout.

Key takeaways

 

  • All participants were able to complete all of the tasks without any problems

  • They found the website very easy to navigate around with clear toy categories

  • The checkout process was easy to follow

  • Suggested to include more information on the Home Page (contact information, FAQ, Store policies)

  • Suggested adding the zoom-in icon on the Product Details Page

  • Suggested adding category “ALL TOYS” for those who don’t want to search by specific categories

HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE

 

I have combined all the elements shown throughout the design process to create a warm, functional, fun, and easy-to-use website. The goal was to be able to test if the new design was intuitive and met the primary persona's needs.

 
 

Next Steps

 

Working on this project I discovered users want to see clear product display and organization so that they could find and buy what they really want. It is hard to feel the toy when you're not in a physical store.

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If I were to push this project further, I would add more value and delight by implementing other features incorporating elements to make sure the design is accessible.