Situation
Our client, a major retailer, who recently expanded their operations into telecommunications and broadband services, wanted to increase the conversion rate of their online sales platform. The idea was to give the general layout a makeover, optimising usability and simplifying the checkout process.
Approach
Following a thorough assessment of our client's analytics and sales statistics we were able to identify two major findings:
- A general increase of the use of mobile devices to access content: Within 12 months mobile traffic had grown from less than 10% to more than 20%
- TV campaigns would drive spikes in mobile traffic of more than 25%, due to a “double-screen” – effect, where viewers would use their mobile device or tablet to check the offer online, whilst watching the ad on their TV
Following this discovery we made the recommendation to undertake a design overhaul and implement a responsive user interface, starting with the checkout environment, which hitherto had seen a particularly high drop-out rate in users of mobile devices. In addition to that, we also suggested creating a number of campaign specific, mobile optimised landing pages, which would temporarily be put in place to cater for traffic generated from TV ads, until the fully responsive version would be up and running. The main objective is to simplify and de-clutter the existing offering, focussing on the key selling points, we wanted to deliver an environment which would be intuitive and easy to use from any platform - be it a mobile phone, a tablet or a regular desktop PC. Based on the latest research and best practice, learned through previous projects, we opted for a minimalistic approach using simple shapes, an easy to read font and a colour scheme, which would bear our client's brand colours and be aesthetically pleasing at the same time. The challenge here was not only to create an interface which would render correctly across a considerable number of devices but also be able to provide for copy in the three national languages - German, French and Italian – all of which have different space requirements.
Despite an incredibly tight deadline and a mammoth-sized scope, our team managed to deliver a highly sophisticated user interface in record time of only 3 weeks for v1, followed by another 2 months for v2, which is now up and running with enormous success: Since initial implementation conversions have gone up for mobile by 50% and desktop by 15%!
