UX/UI Design
Responsive E-Commerce for VeJa
Overview
The Challenge
Design a responsive e-commerce in seven days
Role
UX/UI Designer
Duration
7 days (full-time)
About VeJa
VeJa is a company that mainly develops plug-ins (amplifier simulators) for guitarists. The small start-up sells its plugins on a single platform. In the future, they want to expand to others and become more independent through their own e-commerce.
Expanding Veja’s Horizons: Exploring Solutions and Unique Selling Points for an E-commerce Venture
As already mentioned in the introduction, the main problem of Veja is that they’re currently selling on one single platform & they want to expand their business. An own e-commerce with detailed information, support, trials, and tutorials could be a good solution. Through this, they could reach a wider audience and increase customer trust. For that, we need to understand the industry & empathize with the users & their needs.
In the next step, we did a SWOT analysis. The strengths of Veja are that they provide a unique sound through their plugins, they support their customers and their interfaces are user-friendly.
Weaknesses are that they are not a well-known brand & they still have a small product line but by their e-commerce, we can potentially turn this weakness into a strength by conveying expertise & reliability.
We conducted five user interviews and our main take-aways were:
Validation — A lot of research is done before deciding which plugin is best for their needs. The most important factors to help them decide are reviews (from experts or the community) and recommendations from friends.
Price — Plug-ins are often a cheap way to replace analog gear, but they are indeed not affordable. It’s just that analogs are very expensive. At least at this point, Veja offers the plugin at a much lower price point than the market, making it quite affordable.
Understanding/Intimidation — Plugins can be very intimidating and users can feel like they don’t know what they’re doing before they try them. They are afraid to start because they have already assumed that it will have a big learning curve and require a lot of time. Also, some users had issues after the purchase with the installation process.
"The Community is strong and I could search for answers on the internet.” - Caro
“I like about digital plugins that I can also use them when I’m traveling.” - Diego
“The installing process is often very difficult and the online research to find out how it works, takes a lot of time.” - Dennis
Guitar Johnny: The Persona Driving Our Design Process
Next, we used our findings to create the user persona “Guitar Johnny”. Johnny helped us throughout the project so we remember who we were designing for and what his needs, and goals, but also frustrations were.
To define his main pain points during the search for new plugins, we created a user journey map and phrased HMW Statements:
How might we shorten the search for a new plugin?
How might we simplify the installation process?
How might we provide more resources and guidance to users to help them with the installation process?
Unpacking Plugin Frustrations
After these steps, we were able to frame our problem statement:
Musicians exploring new sounds through plugins need to find a way to better understand the process of using and installing them because the additional research required after the purchase is very frustrating.
VeJa’s E-commerce Solution: Empowering Users with Confidence in Plugin Installation
For the ideation, we used the crazy 8 method where a team member sketches 8 different ideas in 8 minutes. By using the MoSCoW method we were able to sort those ideas into must have, should have, and could have.
To bring the ideas together to solve the defined problem, we came up with our MVP statement:
Our e-commerce website for VeJa aims to help the users feel comfortable and secure that they will accurately manage to use and install their plugins.
Users get the support and information they need throughout the process from step-by-step video guides and tutorials for each plugin and on the installation process of VeJa plugins.
By ensuring that these features are available, the users will learn about the operation and installation of VeJa plugins to get effortlessly started with digital plugins.
Streamlining Ideation for a Simple User Flow
With the MVP Statement and the features of the website ready it was time to create a User Flow. This flow shows the simple straightforward way that a user would purchase a VeJa plugin.
Concept Testing Takeaways
What’s working:
The overall concept was clear
The flow was good
Having tutorials and samples is positive
What’s not working:
Users don’t like the pop-up
A contact option is needed
Download number could bring trust
After collecting the feedback, we made some new adjustments when creating mid-fi wireframes. Once these things were in place, we conducted usability testing.
Usability Testing Takeaways
What’s working:
It’s clean, easy, and intuitive
The footer has all the needed information
What’s not working:
The alignment wasn’t good in some sections
More context on the home page
Setting the tone
After the testing, we took all feedback into account before diving into the Hi-Fi wireframes. For that, we created a mood board based on the defined brand attributes: High Quality, Simplistic, Transparent and Creative.
Following that we created a style tile for the e-commerce of Veja to show their brand attributes in their visual communication.
While expressing a clean, high-quality atmosphere with a sense of transparency, orange is used as an accent color to create a creative impression. The type Inter and the high usage of white space represent the simplicity of the brand.
Hi-fi prototype
Here you can also see how the website would look like on different devices.
What’s next?
There are new features we plan to implement in the future, such as an artist page where artists can demonstrate how to use VeJa’s plugins, and a user area where users can promote their songs.
We would also like to implement a chatbot and a guide if you need more information.
Thanks to Veja, our interviewees, my team members André Fernandes and Veronika Nikonova.
