The goal of this project was to support our client with user research, conception, product design and technical implementation of an e-commerce platform for German craftsmen.
I led the product design of the platform between December 2019 and March 2019. I worked alongside Product Manager, Researcher, Product Designer, and a remote team of engineers (frontend and backend).
We gradually stopped working on the project at the beginning of 2021, when the platform started growing, and the full-time team was hired.
Our client came to us with the request to support them with building an e-commerce platform for small craftsmen companies in Germany.
Our goal was to rethink the product and service offering for tilers and implementing forward-looking solutions in the market for the trade of tomorrow.
Our high-level goals were to:
• Define the basic version of the web-shop and build an extendable solution that has the core functionality of the web-shop (including payment processing) that can have “killer features” added on later
• Gain the trust of the users from the very beginning
• Offer enough information about the correct usage of the products
• Get the first 100 users and improve the experience together with them
Our research phase started with writing various hypotheses and defining the goal for this phase:
"To understand the requirements and user needs and validate the interest of professional tilers in Germany in online shopping."
We recruited and interviewed 10 tilers with various team sizes. Based on these interviews, we were able to define the user persona who would benefit from and would be interested in an online solution:
After defining the personas, we continued to structure the information and find common themes and pain points that the tiles mentioned. We defined 9 major areas that were repeatedly discussed during the interviews:
Based on the identified problem areas, we came up with the following opportunity areas and "How might we" questions, that later informed the ideation sessions:
Based on the interviews, there is a suspicion that very small businesses with one or two employees may derive less operational benefit from an online store than larger businesses. The greater the material consumption, the more likely it is that a company warehouse exists for which supplies are regularly ordered.
Small businesses often have no warehouse at all, order all materials per project or construction phase, and mainly order smaller quantities that can be transported in their carts.
Therefore, it might make sense, especially in the beginning, to adjust the target group a bit and focus on companies with about 5-10 employees. These also more often have the capacity to try out and learn about new products.
Craftsmen often do not have the time to deal with new products. Even keeping track of existing product ranges from different brands is difficult. Therefore, many craftsmen rely on the advice of experts from the respective dealers or brands when there are uncertainties.
Currently, this advice is largely given over the phone or in person, though both of these methods have pros and cons. Expanding the advice offered through video chat could be a beneficial middle ground for all parties involved. Clients can expect immediate help without having to convey the problem purely verbally. Consultants, on the other hand, no longer have to physically travel to each job site and would save a lot of travel time. (It is important to keep in mind that video chat will still not be a universal solution for everyone and every problem).
Sales representatives are the link to the craftsmen. They are the face of the brand to the outside world and assume the role of representative, advisor, and guarantor. This network already exists through the existing brands and should ideally be integrated into the market strategy in order to reach the largest possible number of craftsmen.
To detach craftsmen from their previous dealers and encourage them to buy online, prices must be correspondingly lower. The perception of craftsmen is that online retailers have lower operational costs than stationary retailers, which should be reflected in the price.
Furthermore, price/performance is the main factor that can cause brand switching. Since the qualitative differences between products are small, there is hardly any reason to switch apart from price.
Since there is a relatively high potential for long-term customer loyalty among tilers, craftsmen should be made to feel that they are valued as customers and rewarded for their loyalty. There are various approaches that could be taken in this regard (e.g. Christmas card & voucher, increasing discounts, points, etc.).
To meet as many of the customers' needs as possible, delivery should happen in a maximum of 2 days, or at best one day. These delivery times seem to be the market standard.
Since deliveries are ordered to the company warehouse or directly to the construction site, depending on requirements, various delivery options must be made possible that are optimally adapted to the customer's circumstances and capacities.
Since some construction chemical products are used in almost all projects, they are often stocked and restocked at intervals of a few weeks. The ability to have these products delivered regularly, without having to ask for them again, should relieve the burden on tradesmen.
Here, it is critical to build trust that the terms of the subscription give tradespeople as much control and flexibility as possible over quantities and delivery periods. Changing these factors should be made as easy as possible.
Based on the key requirements and benchmarked market solutions, we started creating the wireframes:
After a round of presentation and feedback, I proceeded to designing a more detailed version of the shop. After the round of visual designs was completed, we reached out to the tilers and asked for their feedback, which was then implemented into visual designs and MVP.
The first version of the webshop was live at the end of 2020, and already by February 202 we gained our first 50 users who ordered the test kit.
Throughout the next months, we continued doing the research and changed the UX quite significantly. One of the examples was the product overview page, which we originally designed to be quite minimalistic. During the interviews, it turned out, our users wanted more information in the overview and didn't want to click back and forth to understand the product application.
Currently, the webshop is financially successful and is well-recognized in Germany. You can check it out by visiting tilcra.de