L’Ange Hair is a start up company launched in 2016 with less than 30 employees. In 2016/2017 the company grew $2 to 3 millions in sales. In 2020, L’Ange Hair had 250+ employees and its annual revenues in sales exceeded $200+ Millions.
The company was growing incredibly fast. It had a highly performing presence on Social Media, driving 88% of the traffic to the site.
Challenges
There is no way to find the right product for your hair needs at first glance.
The range of products, especially the hair care line, is complex. The packaging does not differentiate the products efficiently enough for the user to know what could fit the user needs. There are no refunds on liquid products. Customer experience is also facing a high volume of complaints : customers bought the wrong product for their hair.
How can we provide our users a way to select the best products for their hair types with a smooth, quick and easy experience to enhance their satisfaction ?
A 10 month initiative!
The timeline was approximately 10 months.
We did a soft launch in June 2021 and a large marketing push in August 202
Objective
Advise the user through a guided self-service digital experience on which products works Best for the user’s hair type and goals to increase satisfaction, a feeling of personalization and business revenue.
My role was to:
- Help to collect and draft the requirements
- Brainstorm with the main stakeholders
- Define the user profiles, needs, frictions and goals
- Define the user flow
- Define the logic to display the proper results
- Create prototypes and wireframes
- Partner with the Data Scientist
- Produce the final UI
- QA as the project gets implemented
- Participate in daily standup with dev/tech team
- Follow up and help to track the project on Clubhouse
- Connect with the Back-End team and Front-End team to adapt the logic and fix edge cases and logic issues
Stakeholders
- Training and Education Specialist – CX Representative
- Director of affiliates program
- Full-Stack Data Scientist
- Dev Team (BE and FE)
- Brand Manager
- Technical PM
- CMO
Softwares and Tools
Clubhouse, Miro, Figma, Excel, Lambda test, Shopify, Full Story, GTM, Google Analytics.
Phase 1 – Defining our users
With the creative director and CMO, we conducted user profile research based on Data (FB, GA, CX).
The current customers of l’Ange is defined as:
- Influenced by social media affiliates
- 85% female
- Gen Z & X
- 90% Shopping on Mobile from the in-App Safari browser
- Our users see a video on Social Media from a Beauty influencer before shopping on the site
Phase 2 – A comprehensive research and analysis: field studies, user surveys, stakeholder interviews, and competitive testing to uncover key insights
We conducted field study and user surveys. We went through multiple stakeholders interviews. We collected requirements and constraints. We ran competitive patterning and testing discovery of competitor solutions (quiz programs, User flows, SWOTs).
Product & User Research
The goal was to put the needs of the users first. They needed to find the best product for their hair types.
We used field study & user surveys, sessions recordings (HotJar and Full Story).
We found out that the offering was overwhelming and too complex. We needed to reduce the offering with specific recommendations to help our users reach their hair goals and enhance overall user satisfaction.
Some of the users frictions / frustrations we defined as :
- Users are not able to find the right product for their hair with ease
- Users are are unfamiliar with the products
- Some products seem to overlap benefits
- Packagings are not a clear source for product differentiation
- Users do not have time to dig into the PDPs to find the answers
Gather & Organize Products
It appeared that we needed to do some work on our product offering.
We separated liquids from the Tools, defined liquids product vs hair type compatibility vs goal. We also looked at the tools and organized them by hair length and type. We also organized the tools on hair density and ease of use, frequency of use and also assigned each product to specific user goals.
“Based on my hair type, I want to be able to select my needs to reach my hair goals!”
There is no way to find the right product for your hair needs at first glance.
The range of products, especially the hair care line, is complex.
The packaging does not differentiate the products efficiently enough for the user to know what could fit the user needs.
No refunds on Liquids. CX high volume of complaints : customers bought the wrong product for their hair.
How can we provide our users a way to select the best products for their hair types with a smooth, quick and easy experience to enhance their satisfaction ?
Phase 3 – Wireframes & Flows : tailoring product offerings and paths based on user needs and analysis
We started by grouping Users needs, Goals with matching products.
Based on User carts analysis, we also grouped Liquid vs Tools and defined our user paths.
We believed that encouraging users to send their recommendations by email could increase conversions (customers would come multiple times on the site before converting).
We also decided to allow users to retake the quiz at the end of the quiz.
On our results page, we would display a curated selection of products, ranging from best matching to the user’s hair preferences to the least matching product.
Phase 4 – Collaborating for success with a proof of concept (POC)
I worked on partnering with the Creative team to gather assets such as copy and Visual Quiz icons through the experience. icons to be selected by our users (gave direction, feel, inspiration board, feedback and mentoring creative partners and I actively participated in the selection process).
I decided to approach the quiz as a step by step (page by page) with a soft feminine look and feel, a neutral UI (shadow beige color) to focus on functionality first and not get our users distracted by a complex design.
I worked with the Back End team to determine the best algorithm to deliver the final results. We revised the POC as a team through an extensive UAT phase.
Phase 5 – Final UI
Prioritizing iconography and concise copy for a clear UI
I prioritized the use of the iconography and kept the copy short and as concise as possible.
I focused on designing a simple clear user Interface to support ease of use, clarity and scannability.
Phase 6 – Implementation, QA, testing and refinements via an iterative process
At implementation, we had a change of timeframe to focus on other business priorities. Our MVP ended up having some functionalities and the interactions cut.
We also had to spend some time on tagging PDPs with Tags in Shopify admin.
We QA’d the responsiveness via Lambda test and again refined the algorithm with BE and FE teams.
We influenced tracking instrumentation to understand users a bit better and get some key questions answered:
- “Is the Hair Quiz actually surfacing the correct results?”
- “Are users actually purchasing items from the Hair Quiz?”
- 3 “Does a user always select the best matching product based on their results?”
Pre-Launch: Test the solution via a user focus group
Before launch, we tested the quiz on a small group of selected users, returning and new.
We gathered their feedback via a survey to validate or iterate on the project (unmoderated usability, survey, list of bugs).
Conclusion
We found that the quiz had a conversion rate of about 28%. Overall, a user taking the quiz is 3 times more likely to convert.
50% of the users sending their recommendations by email converted.
We noticed an increased in terms of User satisfaction after the hair quiz by 75%
Opportunities
Based on recordings and data, refine UX (ex. dead clicks, heat maps): we could also refine further the returned results as sometimes the results could still be overwhelming and answer to specific edge cases (ex. colored treated hair).
We could :
- Use stored data from users to personalize customers’ online experience (recommendations based on the Quiz).
- Offer coupons and discounts while sending the product recommendations to the customer’s email address.
- Propose a gift with purchase to encourage conversion.
- Increase marketing campaigns to drive more traffic for a higher impact on the overall revenue.
