Making waves and bigger sales with simplicity
I increased order value average by 18% by advocating for enhanced user alignment to modern standards and guiding customers to make more confident, educated purchases.
My Role
Product Designer
The Team
2 Marketing specialists
1 Operations manager
3 Stakeholders
Skills + Tools Used
UX, User research, Figma, Shopify, Google Forms
Process
Research → Audit → Data → Web Ads + Content → Education + Guidance
Timeline
2 years
Problem
Revenue is down at Greenlight Surf Supply, and past marketing tactics aren’t working.
The marketing team was struggling with increasing revenue growth despite utilizing past successful methods.
Goal
Increase dollar average per order by trying something new--building trust with customers.
Surf Around and Find Out
We lacked knowledge so I started with connecting with our data and users to understand more. I conducted a competitive analysis + usability heuristics evaluation to understand how customers purchase surf supplies and gear across the market.
Glide
Foam E-Z
Fiberglass Source
Pros
Cons
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Consistent social presence
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Content rich
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Navigational expansion and discount pop-up create clutter
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Text over hero is too light
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Difficult to to read
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Catchy, attractive tagline; “The Shapers Savior”
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Low res images, erratic branding
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Dated web and visual style
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Widest array of products and options
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Almost no real discernible branding, very inconsistent
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Business story is hard to find, not many trust signals
Quick Assessment
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Low visual hierarchy
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Easily perceived as untrustworthy
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Messy, outdated card utilization
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Low resolution images
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Very text-heavy
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Sections are difficult to read
Customers Thought...
Older customers from ages 35 to 50 felt uncomfortable navigating and found it hard to locate specific item variants.
Newer and younger customers found the website to be dated and were not sure if it could be trusted with personal information and credit card details.
The competition is lacking in modern design and have imagery that makes them seem untrustworthy.
Low-lift adjustments to the company’s web site can be refined to carve a slice in the market as the only modern vendor.
Reformatted Page
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Stronger visual hierarchy
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Clearer trust signals
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Cleaner layout
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Greater image to text ratio
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Clearly defined sections
Older customers from ages 35 to 50 felt it was easier to navigate, easier to search for new products.
Newer and younger customers described that the site was much easier on the eyes, and felt safer purchasing.
Internalizing the Tides and Patterns
I analyzed the customer life cycle to verify if the company was losing money, as it’s easier to maintain a current customer than it is to acquire new ones. As a result, I conducted 8 qualitative interviews and issued surveys to collect data to distill the biggest challenges in the customer journey.
How do our customers prefer to shop?
What stops them from making a purchase?
Can I increase customer satisfaction and decrease revenue loss at the same time?
So many questions though...
First, I interviewed 8 participants to understand their purchase experience.
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“What’s been your experience purchasing from our us?”
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“Have you encountered any issues with our products?“
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“Anything that we can do to make life better?”
?
$
Then, I surveyed customers through the existing marketing channels to gather quantitative data.
1 of 5 are Returning Customers
Average Sale Total: $670
6-10 unique items
35% felt they forgot to purchase at least one item
22% indicated that they needed clarification on purchases
“I didn’t understand that these chemical products don’t work together, can I return it for a different item?”
“Things are hard to find sometimes. I need to make a list to make sure I don’t forget things!”
“I bought the toolkit but didn’t know I needed another tool to make everything work. Frustrating.”
Taking Action to Change the Waves
I concocted a formula to address our customers overarching needs directly by sticking to a design pillar:
SHUT UP AND
MAKE IT EASY TO
TAKE MY MONEY!
The Idea? Design a Comprehensive Product Recommendation System
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Use existing feedback from customer service communication and email list
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At first, it was arduous due to the growth scalability of the feature
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To manage the scope, the feature was implemented with a selected few products identified with the highest rates of customer support requests
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After testing with the internal team, then select beta customers, the feature was launched.
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Orders using the feature were identified with the backend system via a tagging system.
Results of Implementing the Product Recommendation System
+ 18%
Order Value Average from 1-8 months
+ 16%
Overall Revenue Increase
Rallying the Community Loyalty
Analyze Campaigns to Define Conversions
I worked with the marketing team to analyze data in order to increase new and old customer engagement. I then gauged the data flux to define which avenue the company should continue to invest and which to reallocate budget.
What Does the Conversion Flow Look Like?
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Hits to the website
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Clicks via our emails and ads
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Use of discount codes
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Increased social media engagement
From In-Person Stickering to an Online Sticker Contest!
While my role humbly began as a shipper, I ascended through the ranks to assume the responsibilities of elevating the overall purchase experience. After observing several customers leaving their stickers behind, I came up with a novel idea: launching an online sticker contest as a campaign!
Through user submissions of custom stickers, our team tagged the respective companies in social media posts and provided a discount code.
This was effective in a three-fold way:
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Cross-promotion with builders who operate their own business.
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Allowed us to directly gauge engagement numbers.
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Increased overall order volume
The head of building management, Taco, selecting the winner.
Support Marketing Campaign Efforts to Expand Effectiveness
With Instagram having the highest engagement rate, the marketing team proposed to increase our investment with paid media ads. As a result, I collaborated with the team to produce an initial set of social media posts, templates, and scalable content growth systems.
Campaign Results
+ 18%
Conversion Rates Increases
+17%
Social Media Interaction Increases
How Were the Waves?
Transferable understanding of the culture led to a quicker, more effective dynamic with others.
With only a background in skateboarding, it was easier than I’d anticipated to immerse myself in the culture of surfing and water sports through the team. I found this immeasurably helpful as it allowed me to:
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learn the lingo to understand the etiquette (such as “don’t drop in on someone else’s run, it’s bad manners!”)
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participate in the rituals of community to connect with others that want to build a solid board and have a great ride.
How Would I Surf Differently?
In the next swell, I would like to explore new product roll outs and announcements.
With my time was spent mostly on increasing customer satisfaction I didn’t have much in the way of bandwidth to have a hand in the new product rollouts. I would have liked to work with the marketing team to develop strategies for reaching our customers with new products.
Want to Surf Together?
Fire away an email to: harrisonklostreich@gmail.com