Abcam

Background

Abcam are a B2B life science company based in Cambridge, UK. They research, manufacture and supply a wide range of pharmaceutical products, with Primary Antibodies being their most widely sold products. Their customers range from large pharmaceutical clients such as AstraZeneca, to small, independent research labs.

Over a 3 year period I worked with Abcam's Digital Product team as a Senior UXD to re-design and launch a new online e-commerce experience for their customers. My time with them was spent working solely on the re-design and optimisation of the customer search journey, which is what this case study will focus on.

The problem

Abcam's current e-commerce solution had been in place for many years, but faced several issues. From a technical standpoint, their was a need to have the website better integrate with the businesses numerous other functions such as physical order fulfillment and customer support.

From a design standpoint, their was a desire to improve the end to end search experience. Due to Abcam's large range of products, it was known that customers were having difficulty locating the right product for their scientific needs and understanding the small but often important variations between products.

The approach

• 1. Discovery - identify customer pain points and needs
• 2. Journey design - prototype an improved customer search journey
• 3. Prototype testing - test the journey with a small cohort of users
• 4. Iteration - refine and improve the experience based on feedback

1. Discovery

A series of user interviews were conducted with a cohort of scientific researchers to deepen our understanding of the type of problems they encountered when ordering products for use in scientific research, and to explore some of our underlying assumptions.

We were able to understand their decision making process when selecting and buying products. It soon became obvious that the best approach would be to imagine a totally new search journey based on their unique behaviour, rather than simply trying to improve the existing journey.

What we found:

• Product choice - Users had difficulty finding the right product for their needs. Filtering on results pages was complicated and rarely used.
• Comparison options - Users wanted to be able to compare products more effectively when making a choice, and this was difficult to do.
  
• Information visibility - Product detail pages were cluttered and difficult to navigate. Valuable information was often not immediately visible.
  

2. Journey Design

Insights gained from the research were discussed with business stakeholders and potential solutions explored in a series of design thinking workshops. Working with the business stakeholders allowed us to understand more deeply the problems customers faced, as the majority of stakeholders had scientific backgrounds too.

Insights from these workshops were re-written as user stories and combined with the business requirements. These were then plotted as a story map which formed our MVP. The new journey was re-imagined around scientists JTBD when selecting and choosing a product and focused on three key steps of the customer journey: searching for a product, comparing a product & choosing a product.

I. Searching for a product

Scientists are very often interested in researching the biological properties of a target. A target is collective term given to a particular cell, protein or gene and this is often what scientists will focus their search around when looking for products.

Alongside a target, scientists will usually have other criteria in mind, such as the type of species the target relates to (human, animal etc) and the type of process they may be using to observe chemical reactions with their chosen target, known as an application.

We designed a new search interface that allows scientists to search for products related to different targets, across multiple product categories. The search screen also offers suggestions for related entities (species, applications etc) that a scientist could add to their search to help narrow down their options and find the right product.

II. Comparing a product

Scientists often want to see all available products for their search criteria and compare them before making a choice, so we designed a search results page which showed all available products across different categories that matched their search criteria.

The page stacked results horizontally and highlighted key information that is required by scientists to inform a purchasing decision such as images which show the success of the product in previous experiments, the number of times the product has been referenced in scientific publications and customer reviews.

The results page also allows scientists to compare products using a 'Quick view' comparison tool. When clicking on a search result, a slide out panel opens showing further information about that specific product, which allows scientists to compare key information accross multiple products on one screen.

III. Choosing a product

We designed a product detail page to house all the key information a scientist will require before and after choosing a product. The detail page was split across three tabs: Overview, Datasheet and Support & Downloads.

The Overview tab displays the all the top level information a scientist would require when choosing a product, including the general characteristics of the product, contents of the product (if it was a kit), reactivity information (how it works with certain species or applications), alongside product images, scientific references and customer reviews.

The Datasheet tab displays much more specific information about a product related to it's usage, storage and any additional notes that a scientist should be aware of when purchasing or using the product in research. The Support & Downloads tab contains all after-sales support information and literature, which would include things such as safety documents, instructions, guides etc

3. Prototype testing

The search journey prototype was tested with a cohort of researchers and reviewed with a number stakeholders from across different business functions. Users were asked to complete tasks such as finding a specific product or a specific piece of information, and were then observed. They were also asked to give their overall impressions of the new design and feedback in terms of it's accessibility, how it stacked up against competitor experiences etc

What we found:

• The search experience was seen as novel and different to competitors, due to the fact that scientists were encouraged to use filters early on in the search journey to narrow down their search results
• Their was concern that encouraging a change in user behaviour in this way might lead to confusion and frustration, as scientists were used to simply typing in one search term and hitting enter
• The new layout and design was seen as being much more user friendly and easier to scan, find information etc, although their was some concern that because the layout had changed scientists would need to adjust to this new way of finding information
• The comparison panel on the search results screen was seen as a useful feature but there was some concern that the behaviour was cumbersome and introduced additional clicks into the journey

4. Iteration

The initial prototyping and testing phase took around 10 months. The next 18 months were spent iterating on the search journey design to improve the user experience, design additional features and work with the technical and data teams to build a fully functioning search journey that would integrate with the new payment & checkout experience that was being built in parallel.

Outcomes

A Beta version of the new experience was released to three countries during this time where additional customer feedback was gathered and used to make further changes to the user experience. As of late 2023, Abcam is continuing to rollout the new experience across many of it's larger markets and aims to release in it's two largest markets, the US and China, in early 2024.