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Barrier Reef Aquariums
UX and Usability Research Study
Project overview
Barrier Reef Aquariums is a small retail and service business in the Greater Seattle Area specializing in fresh and saltwater/reef aquarium livestock, design, and maintenance. After a recent redesign of their website and launch of their online store in August 2023, it was determined that Barrier Reef Aquariums could benefit from a research study to gain insights into what is causing lower than desired conversion rates.
Skills & Methods
Competitive Analysis, Heuristic Evaluation, User Survey, Task Analysis, Data Visualization, Affinity Mapping, User Personas, Journey Mapping, User Research, User Testing
Role
Sole UX Researcher
Client
Barrier Reef Aquariums
Timeline
January - February 2024
Approximately 5 weeks
Tools
Google Forms, Hotjar, Figma, FigJam, Illustrator, InDesign
Project Goals
After reviewing the analytics of their Shopify-based site, we decided to focus on the following:
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How might we improve Barrier Reef Aquariums website’s mobile view where over 70% of their customers utilize their website?
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How might we improve the conversion rate, which is currently averaging less than 2%?
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How might we refine the overall visual design of the website?
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research Plan
My research process for this study was broken out into three phases: Evaluation, Exploration, and Compilation. The Evaluation phase allowed me to dig into the Barrier Reef Aquariums website and get a sense of its contents and overall design, and gave me a chance to test it against Jakob Nielsen's usability heuristics. For the Exploration phase, I took my focus to the users where I surveyed current customers, collected heatmap data of website visitors, and conducted task analysis with participants who are not customers of the company. Gathered data was then taken into the Compilation phase and informed the development of user personas, an affinity map, and a journey map. Finally, a report containing all aspects and findings of the study was assembled and presented to Barrier Reef Aquariums for their consideration.
evaluation phase
Heuristic Evaluation
I put the Barrier Reef Aquariums website through a thorough heuristic evaluation using Jakob Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics. I focused on the mobile view of the website for this evaluation since Shopify's analytics showed over 70% of their traffic was coming from mobile. Several issues were identified, the most of which violating the following heuristics:
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Aesthetic and Minimal Design
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Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
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The full heuristic evaluation is available to click through below.
Competitive Analysis
To get a clear understanding of what Barrier Reef Aquariums' competition was doing with their websites, I conducted competitive analysis. I selected four competitor aquarium businesses based on the following criteria:
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Business offerings should be comparable to Barrier Reef Aquariums’ (ie. livestock, aquarium design, aquarium maintenance, etc.)
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Business must be local to or have a satellite store located in western Washington
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Selection of competitors should include businesses of differing sizes
My evaluation covered website features, messaging, and navigation, including positive and negative observations of each aspect. I then selected two of the four competitors and evaluated their sites based on the four E’s: Entice, Enter, Engage, and Extend.
The full competitive analysis is available to click through below.
exploratorY phase
uSER SURVEY
I created a website usability survey using Google Forms for Barrier Reef Aquariums’ newsletter subscribers to get a sense of their overall impressions, how they use the site, what pain points they might be experiencing, and thoughts on what sort of changes they would like to see. I approached Barrier Reef Aquariums to ask if they would be able to offer a small incentive to encourage participation in the survey and they were happy to oblige. I collected responses from 25 participants over 8 days and these were the main takeaways:
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Overall, users felt the site performed well, rating an average of 4 or 5 out of 5.
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Any complaints or change requests were more about content rather than UI design.
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The most reported hindrance to completing a purchase was shipping cost (40%) , with price coming in second (16%).
Heatmaps
To better understand usage patterns of current and potential customers on their website, I used Hotjar to generate heatmaps and record user sessions. I set up this tool to focus on the homepage as well as some of the more common product pages in the online shop. After a week of collecting data, the heatmap data showed no cases of users encountering errors or being unable to complete a task, and there were zero reported "rage clicks". A few noteworthy insights about customer behavior gathered include:
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Users engage with the scroller on the homepage featuring sales and deals as well as the banner below it featuring a limited time promotion. This is the one of the only ways to access discounted products.
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The filter/sort tool is accessed, however less often than I expected. This may be due to the limited filtering metrics currently available.
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A lot of activity around finding store information and store policies, in the footer but especially in individual product listings.
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The Search function is utilized quite often, leading me to believe the current navigation categories may not be sufficient.
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Data collected from the user survey and heatmaps is available to click through in full below.
Task Analysis
I decided to conduct an in-person task analysis with participants who had no affiliation with Barrier Reef Aquariums. This would allow for unbiased, fresh-eyed feedback about the site. For this activity, I sought out five volunteer participants using the following criteria:
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18+ years old
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Has previous experience using an e-commerce platform as a customer
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Is not currently a customer of Barrier Reef Aquariums, nor has prior experience using their website
Using cognitive walkthrough methodology, I worked with participants one-on-one as they completed three basic tasks on Barrier Reef Aquarium’s site using their personal mobile device. Once they completed the tasks to the best of their ability, I asked follow-up questions to hear about their experience, impressions, and opinions of the site. Some data highlights found were:
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80% of participants felt the homepage was too long to scroll through and the content within it illogically organized.
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100% of participants felt there was too much copy throughout the site and that it lacked proper visual hierarchy formatting, which made it difficult to read and find information.
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40% of participants commented on expecting an About Us page or the mission statement to be featured more prominently in the upper half of the homepage.
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Data collected from the task analysis is available to click through in full below.
compilation phase
Affinity Mapping
To reveal themes among user feedback collected during surveying and interviewing, I completed an affinity map exercise. Six main themes were found, summarized, and added to the final report. This exercise helped to narrow down where the company should focus their attention in improving the user experience on their website.
User personas
In order to effectively illustrate to the company the experiences of their average customer types, I created three user personas. These personas were then used to inform the development of journey maps to describe their individual experiences on the company's website.
Journey mapping
I developed journey maps for each of my user personas to get a closer look at what their process might involve in achieving a goal specific to them. These maps include recommendations for what Barrier Reef Aquariums might consider in catering to these user types.
Final Report
Reflection
I am so thankful to Barrier Reef Aquariums for letting me do this study for them. It was certainly challenging doing this study on my own but because of that I learned where it really helps to have multiple researcher perspectives like in developing user personas, analyzing data, and writing strong testing and interview questions. If I were to do things differently, I would have spent more time interviewing BRA's current customers, and I would have explored designing a prototype with proposed changes and conducting A/B testing and usability testing to evaluate my hypotheses. Overall, I'm proud of my first research study outside of an academic environment and look forward to refining my skills from this point on.