Team Members:
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Alisha Mudbhary
Jinzhao Chen
Purva Tekkar
Seamus McPeake
Project Context:​
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Designed for University of Washington HCDE Usability Testing Class 2024
Stakeholders:​
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Nordstrom
Context
Nordstrom is is a leading fashion retailer in the United States offering clothing, shoes and accessories for men, women and kids. In addition to providing clothing, nordstrom also offers services such as personal styling, alterations, and beauty services.
Nordstrom approached our team letting us know they had been experiencing high drop-off rates for their appointment booking flow through their online website.
Objectives
Our study aimed to evaluate the experience, discoverability, and awareness of Nordstrom's online appointment booking flow for their personal styling service.
01. Is the existence of the appointment booking tool intuitive and apparent?
02. What parts of the appointment booking process are frustrating for users?
03. What factors contribute to high drop-off rates during Nordstroms styling section of the appointment booking process?
Timeline
Our 10 week timeline consisted of bi-weekly calls with our client. As a team we collaborated on shared documents, which would be shared with the client for feedback by UX Researchers as Nordstrom.
Participants participated in a usability study using a think-aloud method to provide feedback on their use of the appointment booking flow for personal stylist appointments.
Participants
Our study had a sample size of 8 total participants, all belonging to varying age groups. All users had prior experience shopping in large clothing retailers similar to Nordstrom.
All participants had indicated that they had either previously used or were interested in personal styling services.
Positive Findings
The appointment booking process is easy and intuitive to use.
Users across all age groups did not find it difficult to go through the appointment booking flow, suggesting it is a technical issue that cause users to drop off.
Users enjoyed having a range of stylists to choose from.
Multiple participants regarded the range of different stylists with of different gender, ages, and ethnic backgrounds as a highlight in the appointment booking process.
Participants enjoyed the ability for customers to add additional information prior to booking an appointment
Multiple participants regarded the range of different stylists with of different gender, ages, and ethnic backgrounds as a highlight in the appointment booking process.
Negative Findings
Discoverability
Discovering the appointment booking page was significantly difficult for customers, with all participants making at least one error while trying to find the styling service feature.
Issues with headings
When choosing their service 3 of the 8 participants said they were overwhelmed by the different options. 2 of the participants gravitated towards paid services rather than the goal service.
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Half of the participants said they didn't know what the service was going to entail even after completing the flow during the post-test interview.
Issues with stylist information
6 of the 8 participants said they had a preference when choosing a stylist. 3 participants had a moment of overwhelm when encountering the stylist selection page. Some noted this being due to the sizing of the stylist selection page.
Order of pages
After picking the location of their service, users are presented with a page confirming their service and location. Users found this confusing, as they hadn't selected a stylist, date, time, or added additional information.
Additional Information Page Has Unnecessary Questions
After filling out the appointment booking flow, users are presented with a page to enter information that will aid the stylist in their appointment. Some of the information such as "What's the occasion?" several users found did not apply to them.
The range of pricing was off-putting to several users. Some of our participants were students who were not looking to spend over $100 on clothing. 3 participants felt the options weren't large enough.
Solutions
Discoverability
More than half of the participants looked to the navigation bar for the styling services, but ended up looking in categories such as "Men", "Women", and "Designers" for styling. Moving the styling services to an area where customers may be more likely or expect to see it would help with discoverability.
Issues with headings
Refined headings or descriptions would help users understand exactly what they're getting. This would reduce the amount of time customers have to spend on the service selection page and have them feel less overwhelmed.
Issues with stylist information
Create a larger space for the stylist selection page, allowing users to view more, or all, stylists at one time. Having more information about what kind of styling and clothing the stylist likes to wear themselves may help users narrow down who they want to pick as well as keep them on the page.
Order of pages
Create a single page with all of the appointment information at once so the customer can see what service they're booking and when it will be at one time. Users noted that having this page in the middle of the flow was confusing, so having it near the end would be recommended.
Additional Information Page Has Unnecessary Questions
Adding things like images with different aesthetics, clothing brands, activities, or age ranges may help users decide what kind of styling they're looking for, rather than a specific occasion. This would be particularly helpful for users that don't feel like already have a sense of style for themselves.
Adding a different way to select your budget such as a sliding scale or a box to type in a budget would be beneficial to both the stylist and user, also allowing them to feel less pressured to spend money out of their budget.
Takeaways
Participants struggled heavily with the stylist section of this flow. Creating a new study focused around getting users to try different stylists after an initial selection may be helpful in figuring out what issues are present in the current design.
Discoverability was a major issue for participants. Doing further research on general discoverability of the website in addition to the personal styling section would be helpful in aiding users navigate the website, creating a less confusing overall session.
Not everything is negative. There are good ideas currently implemented into this flow, and it's easy to use. The current flow has hiccups that stick out that mostly cause pauses in their use of the flow. There's currently no clear indication as to why or where users are dropping.