Increasing revenue with a search experience redesign
Abcam are a life science company that manufacture and supply a wide range of products used in scientific research.
As part of a larger digital transformation programme, Abcam wanted to improve their online e-commerce experience for scientists looking to find and buy products online.
I worked with the product team as a lead UX Designer to redesign the customer search journey and deliver a cross functional design system.
Project type
E-commerce
Industry
Life science
Role
Lead UX
Date
2024
In the initial phase of the project most of my time was spent hosting workshops with stakeholders to understand their opinions and views on the current search journey.
I also spent a significant amount of time talking to users and collaborating with a researcher to understand the challenges customer were facing with the current journey.
The main problem customers faced was an overwhelming number of results when searching for a product.
A new approach was to get customers to slow down and be more specific about the search terms they were entering by using auto suggest and encouring them to build search queries based on recognised scientific entites.
Research showed that customers found the results page confusing and the number of results difficult to navigate and compare when looking for a product.
The results page was redesigned to show results more clearly and display key information about each product. The filters were also redesigned to be more prominent.
Users had difficulty finding key information for products they were purchasing or had previously purchased.
The product detail page (PDP) was redesigned to allow customers to locate information and content more easily, by addressing layout and architecture issues.
After a company rebrand midway through the project, I worked with the other designers in the product team to create an online style guide based on the visual identity being used for print and communications.
I then applied these visual elements to the search journey as well as continually creating new UI elements and refining the overall visual style of the product throughout the project.
With each subsequent iteration, we tracked customer metrics with Hotjar and observed an overall NPS quality score increase from 6 to 10.
Customer support tickets decreased by around 26% after the new search journey was completed as users were able to find information more easily.
The organisation observed a sales increase and subsequent revenue increase of around 34% after the new search journey was released.
On this project there was large amount of collaboration with senior stakeholders and subject matter experts in the form of workshops and design thinking sessions which I really enjoyed.
I found this collaborative aspect incredibly useful for validating UX decisions and approaches alongside furthering my scientific and domain knowledge.