Checking In
for a Personalized Experience
American Hotel Register needed to modernize their commerce platform, consolidate their catalog data and content supply chain, and overhall their design system for a cohesive brand experience for an omnichannel audience of this iconic hotel supply brand.
Role: UX Architect
Activities: Heuristic Analysis and Competitive Benchmarking, User Research, Information Architecture, Visual Design, User Testing, Change Management
Market: B2B, B2C
Over 40% reduction in zero result searches with revised search
Over 26% increase in average order amount
Increase of search efficacy after integrating content search
Impact
Clipping In for the Ride
In addition to hueristic analysis and competitive benchmarking, we engaged directly with Specialized customers increase our understanding of the decisions made while interacting with the brand.
Using a card-sorting exercise, a pool of just over one hundred participants contributed data to the survey. From a key performance perspective, I was most interested in how much emphasis did gender apply to users shopping for a bicycle. A survey was completed to create segments of data based on responses and those segments were used to help bracket our data and help steer conclusions toward a strategy for the information architecture.
Through an incetivized customer outreach, we gathered an impressive amount of data for quick turnaround study, with a 70/30 split of male to female participants. This allowed us to utilize the data with confidence and define strategies for the catalog architecture.
The results showed that users considered bicycles as gender neutral by a large amount. As an example, 80% of users paired a general Trail Bikes category with a gender specific category such as "Women's Trail Bikes". This pattern repeated itself with all categories of bikes. Overwhelmingly, users were shopping for bikes based on product attributes before considering gender specific profiles. The data also showed that this pattern did not appear as strong when considering apparel items such as shoes or jerseys.
This test helped us define a strategy on how to structure the catalog and provide a navigation that caters to users initial needs and desires without segmenting product choices before the user has made their initial category choice.
Passing the Peloton
The process of building out a design system and experience for an iconic brand steeped in rich lifestyle substance was an amazing experience. We collarborated with in-house staff who leveraged their real-life experiences with the brand and built a tool that allowed their team to push the brand communication past the competition through streamlined content supply chains and focus on making some of the best bicycle components in the world.
