B2B Experience
While at Pottery Barn I had the opportunity to work with a team of designers on the Business to Business Experience. This was a holistic redesign that allowed us to apply design thinking to best solve the problem, consisting of five basic phases: Empathize with the users (learning about the audience), Define the problem (identifying the user’s needs), Ideate (generating ideas for design), Prototype (turning ideas into concrete examples), Test (evaluating the design).
The Challenge
Reimagine the B2B experience to better reflect the unique needs of an interior designer or developer. Our goal was to address areas of friction to increase account applications and convey a large amount of information with a more streamlined and elevated layout.
It was important during this process to consider the brand’s core values. We touched on the brand’s enduring quality, superior customer service, and highlighted the brand’s sustainability initiatives. We leaned on inspirational imagery to help with storytelling, and incorporated our newly refined design system to create proper hierarchy within the page.
This project included: Research, Competitive Analysis, User Personas, Journey Mapping, Wireframing, User Interface Design, Usability Testing, Design Systems, Branding and Digital Marketing.
User Surveys & User Personas
We began learning more about our users by referencing audience data within google analytics to get an understanding of basic demographics. We then interviewed several of our typical users and created user personas to better understand their needs.
We performed user research to determine our user’s wants, needs, and behaviors. We isolated several pain points hindering the user from completing these goals.
Competitive Analysis
We performed competitive analysis to understand where we were positioned compared to our competitors. We took inspiration from features we thought could improve our experience. These insights were a key discussion point when we met with stakeholders.
Stakeholder Feedback
We then gathered feedback from stakeholders to clearly define their goals for the project.
Increase account sign-ups
Clarify information and address FAQ
Update design to better align with current design system
User Journey
We set out to understand the end-to-end experience from the user’s perspective, so we could better address potential pain points. We were able to establish where in the journey we pulled users away from our goals of either encouraging them to sign up for an account or easily find information on the program.
This also helped transition us into the mindset of creating a logical and simplified layout.
Wireframing
We worked through several iterations of wireframes, addressing the pain points we found within the original designs and trying to incorporate the features we appreciated in the competitor analysis.
Rough Mockups
We worked through several iterations of wireframes, addressing the pain points we found within the original designs and trying to incorporate the features we appreciated in the competitor analysis.
Prototype
We created refined versions and presented these to stakeholders to get sign off before beginning testing and pass off to the development team. We self moderated remote user testing of the prototypes and addressed areas where there were issues.
Our initial layout tested well, but clarification in copy and CTA placement helped increase usability further.
Post-Launch Testing
After the new pages went live, our work wasn’t complete. We evaluated the analytics and heat maps to make sure that users were navigating without any roadblocks. We continued to iterate on the initial designs, A/B testing new features to further refine our designs.