UX Case Study — Shopee Redesign [Part 1/3]

Overview

Shopee is one of the most famous online shopping platforms in Indonesia.

In this collaboration project with me as a UX Researcher, Frankim as a UX Designer, and Bella Rosita as a UI Designer, we’re trying to explore how to make a better shopping experience in Shopee App. Even though we divide the ‘roles’ in this project, we still carry out the process together while the role is for who is the “decision-maker” for the parts in the UX Process. And also, credits to Jennifer Rosemary who helps us redesign the Menu Icons on the Homepage.

🔍 Research and Discover

1 — Surveys

Before we decided to go with Shopee, we do a survey to our friends (n =35) about their most-used apps. We asked them to mention apps in a variety of categories such as social, shopping, finance, entertainment, and productivity.

As we expected, Instagram is the most mention apps since we shared the survey through Instagram Story. But interestingly, Shopee becomes the most mentioned apps in the shopping category, we thought Tokopedia comes first — haha, anyway… because of that, we chose Shopee for this project.

After that, we spread out a new survey about users’ shopping experience and behavior in Shopee. And here are some interesting insights we got (sample size [n]=106).

Survey about Shopping Experience and Behavior in Shopee (n=106)

Key takeaways:

• We need to keep Shopee’s “Free Shipping”, items with “Affordable Price” and lots of “Discounts”
• We’re prioritizing Shopee’s Android App over any other platform
• We’re focusing on how to help users navigate Shopee’s App by analyzing their online shopping behavior

2 — Competitive Analysis

Besides Shopee, there are other e-commerces that are frequently mentioned in our survey like Tokopedia, Bukalapak, Blibli, JD.ID and Lazada. So we analyze their existing features and compare them to Shopee to help us understand industry standards and identify opportunities.

Competitive Analysis — for the content of the Homepage

For the homepage, we decided to…

• make a sufficient slide banner
• replace ‘coins’ with a more comprehensible word
• adjust the voucher section to make it more visible
• emphasize flash sale section
• standardize the style of the product category and menu

This competitive analysis sure took a lot of space 😅. For other pages (Search page, Search result/product list, Product detail, Shopping cart, and Checkout page) the process is very similar — we try to break down their content/feature’s, take the competitors’ strengths, and implement them at Shopee. The results of this competitor analysis can also be seen in our design decisions (which will be explained in the next article).

3 — In-Depth Interviews

After that, we invited 5 users (who already agreed on the survey before) to participate in our In-Depth Interview via Google Meet. We asked them to share:

3.1 — their general behavior in shopping online on e-commerce

3.2 — their experience in shopping with Shopee

We asked them to show us how they usually buy things at Shopee. At that time they shared the screen while telling their journey, at the same time we captured their behavior and problems.

3.3 — and their opinion, goals, and expectations

After the interview, we took notes and listen to the interview’s recording to write all the interview transcripts in spreadsheets, so we don’t miss anything important from the user’s perspective. And then we try to break down the whole transcript into different topics that have been mentioned in the interview.

Interview’s Transcript —using Google Spreadsheets [ sorry for poor quality screenshot ]

We moved some of the answers to sticky notes (especially those with shorter answers) to make it easier to sort patterns from the user’s answers (their behavior/difficulties/expectations).

Affinity Mapping — Some of the insights we collected

🧐 Define & Synthesize

After we do the research and organized the data, we compiled the insights into user persona and journey.

User Persona

We found two types of users when we talked with them, they are:

• Shopee’s Consumer (Users who frequently shop in Shopee).
• Shopee’s Non-active Consumer (Users who have the app but rarely shop in Shopee)

User Personas — Shopee’s Consumer & Non-active Consumer

User Journey

based on how the users usually buy something in Shopee.

User Journey — Make a purchase on Shopee App

Identified Problem

• A lot of unnecessary information on the homepage.
• The products they really want are hard to find
• Irrelevant search results.
• Expectation vs. Reality (Displayed images vs. review from customers)
• The voucher/promo claim is confusing

Goal

How might we help users find the product they want more easily in Shopee App?

Continue reading…

This is the end of Part 1 — Introduction, Research, Define.

Please continue reading to find out how we crack the code (read: solve the problem)! 🔥

This UX Case Study is divided into 3 parts, you can check the other part from the link below:

• [Part 2 — Ideate, Prototype, Test]
• [Part 3 — Iteration, Design Showcase, Closing]

Thank you for reading!

If you want to ask, chat or collaborate, feel free to contact me through Linkedin or email at dellaclarissa97@gmail.com.

I would also like to thank my teammate for this project — Bella, Frankim, Jennifer, and all the interview participants — Jesslyn, Teresia, Maya, Gebi, Denny, and Caroline.