GoLow - The Sales Notification App
Notifying users when to buy
My role and responsibilities
Overview
Bargain hunting is a full-time job. Online shopping and social media have eroded traditional sales times and discounts are available in a variety of mediums. The challenge to the buyer is accessing this information without effort.
The challenge was to identify the motivations and habits of online shoppers, to understand the pain points they experience from online marketing, and how this can be improved.
The outcome was a high-fidelity prototype mobile app. Its USP was to filter out unnecessary advertising and notifications, and give back control to the user through personally curated content and notification settings. This allowed the user to be notified about sales items of interest at the right time for them.
Discovery research
I conducted face-to-face interviews with seven people aged between 27-45 working in a large variety of professions. The interviews were scripted in advance, and I took audio recording and pictures of the interviewees. This qualitative research allowed me to understand what pain points people experienced when considering buying a product online.
From this qualitative research I created a primary and secondary persona to help focus the pain points, motivations, and goals from the shopper's experiences.
It was clear from both personas that generic advertising was not hitting the mark. It cluttered up in-boxes and mobile phones, and was then lost. The right person, right message, right time rule was not being utilised to its full potential.
Competitive analysis
I looked at 12 direct and indirect competitors. My key findings were that the standard for clothing and homeware apps was extremely high and the sector was saturated, however other sectors varied in standard and there were still opportunities to improve. It was hard to find uncurated products, so a selling bias was always present.
Exploring and defining the problem
Using the primary persona, Sophie, I created a task analysis based on the journey she might have taken if trying to buy a mattress in the sale. Through this journey she must make a number of decisions to reach her goal and rely on an email newsletter that she did not want to sign up for to notify her of sale times.
I then created an experience map to look at the emotional experience of trying to purchase a mattress in the sale, individually looking at Sophie’s thinking, feeling, experience, and the touchpoints at each stage of the actions.
Narrowing in on the core problems to solve I created a number of user stories based on both the primary and secondary personas. User stories helped me focus the proposition on the user’s perspective which later feed into the feature prioritisation.
Design
How might I improve a sales purchasing experience so that a shopper is better informed of the right time to buy a product for them?
Feature prioritisation helped me to formulate a roadmap that clearly defined and prioritised the goals for the MVP, the next three months, and beyond. From the competitive analysis I found that many indirect competitor apps already had similar sales alert notifications, for this reason I choose to focus on the app’s USP on user curated content and search filters.
I developed a number of user-flows considering the flow of new users, signed in users, and individual elements of the user-flow. My biggest challenge was where to place the sign up process as I did not want the user to be forced to give their personal details (mobile and email), until they understood the value in the app. For this reason I choose to treat both new and signed in users in the same way until the point where the user must give their personal details for notification. I then created a site map to formalise the flows for both new, and signed-in users.
Prototyping
Low-fidelity wireframes
Sketching the wireframes was the most useful part of the prototyping process. They were quick and easy to develop, and after testing the designs on five potential users the feedback made me question and alter aspects of the design that I may have otherwise missed.
Mid-fidelity wireframes
With a granular approach I focused on the sign-up process, account settings, and the saving and watching of products, still developing flow and language. I created three iterations developed through feedback with users.
High fidelity prototype
For the UI and branding I wanted to communicate the app to be both trustworthy and fun to use. The clean interface allowed the user to move through the
process easily and to access information quickly. I also tested a number of colour palettes for accessibility, and placed the menu at the bottom for easy thumb movement.
Next steps
It was clear from the user research that there was a need for GoLow. The challenge however is that the users who would benefit the most from using the app are some of the hardest to acquire. The next steps are to do more research into how users like to be notified and consider how to promote the app to the target users.
