Investigating the shopping behaviour of Australia's largest liquor supermarket's customers during the COVID-19 isolation period. Even with potential health risks, people are still opting to shop in-store. But why?
3 weeks
Paul Harvey
Rhett Simons
Claudia Lei
Research
Surveys
Competitive analysis
Journey mapping
Interviews
Prototyping
Usability testing
Following the double diamond design thinking process, I started the project with the research to discover and gain insights into the problem before synthesising my findings. From there, I ideated my solution and finished with my MVP prototype deliverable.
Customers don't have the option of a contact-free pick-up service whilst having to adhere to social distancing.
It was the start of the global pandemic, why were shoppers still going in store to buy their alcohol?
Dan Murphy's parent company Woolworths owns 49.2% of the liquor supermarket industry- Dan Murphy's being 29% of that. We wanted to know more about the alcohol shopping behaviours of our users to better understand what their needs might be.
From the 10 interviews that we conducted we found that users were still shopping in-store regardless of potential health risks. The reasons?
Shopping in-store is quicker and easier, and I prefer it than using the website.
It's hard to find what I want online, I prefer to go instore.
It may be more risky, but the website is too confusing.
53% of those surveyed stated that they prefer to shop at Dan Murphy's over competitors- the main reason being cost.
35% said that they have never used the Dan Murphy's website.
35% said they used the Dan Murphy's website at least once every 6 months.
17% said they used the Dan Murphy's website at least once a month. 13% said they used the Dan Murphy's website at least once a year.
Our initial assumption was wrong.
Covid-19 wasn't the main issue, it was in fact the Dan Murphy's
website, with a massive 80% of users struggling to use it.
The categories don't make sense.
Why can't I put all items in the basket at the same time?.
I cant use this without opening another tab.
Through open card sorting with 14 users we were able to understand what they expected to see when navigating through the website.
From our research we identified 2 user personas.
Cate our primary user is a weekend shopper at Dan Murphy's. She enjoys making cocktails with friends but finds the large bottles expensive.
Josh drinks regularly, enjoying a beer with dinner. He usually buys beer from local or international brands, sometimes gin or whisky.
With the current Dan Murphy's website being so confusing to use, it was no surprise that users were still shopping in-store.
Why desktop first? The current site, though responsive, is poor. There is an app but people don't use it. From our research we discovered that none of the users used the app. Despite mobile first principles, we decided to focus on what users wanted to use- desktop.
We started our design process with a few lo-fi sketches before moving on to our mid-fi design build.
But there was a problem - our designs were too similar to the already confusing website. This is when I took over the design and re-designed the protptype.
The design of our initial prototype failed hard.
The design didn't represent our research / user needs. After re-designing we finished with a much more suitable prototype.
I learned that it is very important to stick to what the research findings tell you!