CREATING A RESPONSIVE ECOMMERCE GROCERY SOLUTION FOR DUNNES STORES
OVERVIEW
Company name: Dunnes Stores Grocery
Duration of project: 11 months, 2015-2016
Services we (MWG Dublin) provided: Product design, UX research, project management, development, testing, training.
The company: Dunnes Stores has 142 stores throughout Ireland, the UK and Spain, employing almost 15,000 people. They are Ireland's largest and leading retailer providing a unique offering of fashion, food and homewares in one location.
The project: Dunnes Stores has a long established ecommerce site for fashion and homewares but no ecommerce offering for grocery. With the grocery market being so competitive in Ireland they felt they were at risk of losing revenue from online grocery orders to Tesco and SuperValu.
We, MWG Dublin, were hired by them to create an end-to-end, best in class, responsive ecommerce solution for their online grocery business.
ROLES
My role: Lead product designer
Other designers who worked on this project: 1 other product designer from MWG Dublin. 2 ecommerce designers from Dunnes Stores.
Size of the overall team: The MWG Dublin team consisted of 1 product owner, 1 project manager, 2 designers, 10 developers and 2 testers.
GOALS
Business goal: Generate new revenue streams, further brand recognition, and retain customer loyalty by joining the online Irish grocery marketplace.
User goal: Easily shop all Dunnes Stores groceries online on any device and have those groceries delivered quickly and with a wide choice of delivery times.
KEY OBJECTIVES
Key design objective: Create an intuitive, feature-rich and accessible responsive grocery site that maintains the client's strong brand values.
Key technical objective: Develop a fully responsive ecommerce offering that uses the latest technologies and best practice methods.
Key business objective: Deliver the product on time and on budget with all agreed features included. Build relationships with the client for possible future engagement.
CHALLENGES
Problem Statement: This large retailer is missing out on market share because it doesn't have an online grocery shopping service.
Scope & Constraints: Delivering the project on time was key as the retailer was eager to get the product live to maximise its market share of the Irish online grocery segment.
THE COMPETITORS
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PRIMARY COMPETITORS
Tesco and SuperValu are Dunnes Stores primary grocery competitors. Both offer online grocery shopping & delivery. Discount supermarkets Aldi and Lidl are not considered to be direct competitors of these big three middle ground grocers in Ireland.
WHAT THE PRIMARY COMPETITORS DO WELL
Tesco
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Tesco was the first supermarket in Ireland to offer online shopping and delivery. They were well established online in the UK before they brought the service to Ireland, so had had time to refine their online shopping experience.
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They offer a very large range of products for purchase online.
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There are 'Online only' offers to entice users to use the service.
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Their delivery pricing models are adaptive dependent on day, time and location making it easier for them to populate unpopular delivery slots and so more evenly spread the work for in-store pickers and delivery drivers.
Supervalu
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Supervalu had only recently launched their own online shopping service and the front end had been designed by a well known and respected Irish design agency - Each & Other.
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Their site was responsive and accessible.
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The focus was on user experience and simplicity.
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All product imagery and content was of a high quality.
HOW THIS IMPACTED OUR APPROACH
We understood we had to provide all the key functionality of Tesco online if we were to corner market share for our client.
Supervalu, while new to the market, had really upped the stakes in terms of design and customer experience. Our client, who is a comparable traditional Irish grocer, would also be new to the online market and it was understandable that people would be looking at both (Supervalu and Dunnes Stores), and comparing what they were offering. We needed to ensure that from a design and front end perspective we provided an equally high quality experience for customers.
CUSTOMER RESEARCH
"I hadn't heard you could shop online with Supervalu, I'd prefer to shop with them than Tesco"
Customer: Female, 55-44. Dunnes Stores Cornelscourt Shopping Centre
"When I have the time I always shop in Dunnes. We like their 'Simply Better' range. I usually shop online in Tesco though because it's quicker"
Customer: Female, 35-44. Dunnes Stores Stephen's Green Shopping Centre
"If I could shop with Dunnes online I would. Once it wasn't expensive for delivery"
Customer: Male, 45-54. Dunnes Stores Stephen's Green Shopping Centre
"I've never bought groceries online. I expect my daughter would do it for me though, if I wanted her to"
Customer: Female, 65-74. Dunnes Stores Cornelscourt Shopping Centre
KEY USER DEMOGRAPHICS
User 1: Female. 34-45. Shopping for a family. Time poor. Value for money is important.
User 2: Male. 25-34. Single professional. Time poor. High quality range is important
User 3: Female. 65-74. Retired. Value and high quality are important. Delivery important.
HOW THIS IMPACTED OUR APPROACH
We would need to offer a wide range of affordable delivery slots and delivery pricing.
The online product offering would have to be large and easily browsed.
When people thought of online grocery shopping they immediately thought of Tesco. Dunnes Stores would need to heavily market the new online shopping service if they were to gain market share in Irish online grocery shopping.
STORY BOARDING
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Us two MWG Dublin designers began storyboarding key screens.
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We focused only on primary features and interactions.
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We then reviewed these with the Dunnes Stores ecommerce designers to get their feedback and input.
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When we had a simplified end to end user journey complete we collated the sketches and reviewed them with the rest of the project team.
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We then walked the stakeholders through our proposed user journey and iterated with their feedback and input.
This shows storyboards for key navigation - Department categories and search.
TIME TO WIRE
We now began wireframing detailed screens. These would be used by our development team and project manager for internal scoping exercises. They would also be used to review our proposed approach in detail with Dunnes Stores.
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Wireframes for the mobile view mini basket dropdown and book a slot checkout step.
BRANDING THE PRODUCT
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The existing Dunnes Stores fashion & homewares site was not responsive but was a fixed width, with a separate mobile site for smaller screens. We knew there would be some discord for users in the transition to our responsive grocery site, but we hoped to minimise this with consistent branding.
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I worked with the two Dunnes Stores fashion & homewares ecommerce designers to create the branding for the online grocery website.
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There would be a link on the navigation of the online grocery site to the fashion & homewares site and vice versa.
A page from our style guide showing colour palettes for Dunnes Store Grocery.
UI DESIGN
We applied the agreed upon branding to our screen flows, section by section. In the meantime other members of the MWG Dublin project team had been having discussions with the product image supply company, Brand Bank. We knew that high quality product images were key to the experience of the UI.
Top row left to right: homepage, listing, details, min-cart. Bottom row left to right: checkout sign-in, book a slot, payment details, confirmation screen.
OUTCOMES
WAS IT A SUCCESS
The project was in its UAT (user acceptance testing), phase when the client decided they were going to postpone go-live of their online ecommerce grocery shopping service.
They said this was because they were not fully prepared for the detailed logistics they would have to put in place to offer home delivery and in-store picking.
WHAT WE LEARNED
There were a large number of stakeholders in this project on the client's side. We learned that communicating regularly and in detail with all of them was necessary for the project's advancement.
Getting buy-in from all stakeholders at earlier stages of the project would have saved us unnecessary pushback and revisions later on.
WHAT CHANGED
Iterate quickly and often
Communicate directly, when possible, with all stakeholders.
Reach out to stakeholders for feedback and suggestions during not only the design phase but also the research phase.
Stakeholders have great industry knowledge that can inform product decisions.