A prominent British multinational retailer that specialises in selling clothing, home, and food products wanted to improve the impact of their post-purchase email communications.

 

The aim of the project was to understand the expectations of users in the post-purchase journeys so that the client can improve the end experience for their customers and propose changes.

The team 

  • Project Manager

  • UX Consultant (me)   

  • UX Content designer 

  • UI Designer 

My role

  • Created the recruitment screener

  • Created and ran stakeholder interviews

  • Created and ran user Interviews 

  • Wireframing 

  • Created and ran unmoderated testing 

  • Analysing 

  • Reported on findings

Methodology

  • I started this project with ten stakeholder interviews to understand the post-purchase process and their current emails.

  • Next, I interviewed fifteen participants that had experience with post-purchase emails. All of these sessions were conducted remotely over Teams and Zoom. These interviews influenced the wireframes for unmoderated testing.

  • For forty unmoderated tests, each participant looked at two emails, one that the clients were currently sending out to customers and one the UI designer and I created using Figma and Adobe XD. These tests were done using UserZoom.

  • Analysis was done using Miro.

  • After analyses, I made tweaks to the proposed emails, broke them up into 73 components, and delivered them to the client using Zepplin.

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  1. Stakeholder interviews

What was done

I talked to those responsible for and involved in

  • email communication and design 

  • purchase and post-purchase communication in all departments 

  • customer service call centres

What was found

By talking to stakeholders it became clear that there was no one process or team responsible for these emails. It resulted in inconsistencies and delays in changes. There needed to be a unified process that could be governed across departments.  

After talking to the client, we agreed on one person that would be a gatekeeper to the post-purchase emails. We decided that the deliverables would include a tool kit (or components library) and rules that all departments must abide by.

2. User interviews

The focus of these discussions was 

  • Their online post-purchase experience; specifically through email

  • How they responded and wished to be communicated with when things go wrong, as in an item not being delivered or having to return an item.

  • Their behaviour when it came to receiving post-purchase, confirmation emails, and tracking emails.

What was found

There were a lot of detailed findings that came out and were reported. Here are the top 10 high-level ones.

  1. They are overwhelmed with the number of emails they are receiving. So emails need to be clear and to the point. Subject lines need to be specific so that they are easily searchable.

  2. They skim order and delivery confirmation emails and only read the detail when things go wrong. Large amounts of detail make this problematic, and the content needs to be broken down.

  3. Companies that provide a smooth post-purchase experience have raised the bar since the pandemic, and they expect every brand to have caught up.

  4. The confirmation email is the first place they look for return information. If the return process were too tedious or complicated, they would avoid it altogether. They would be left with an item they did not want, causing resentment towards the company.

  5. Participants wanted to be able to monitor their returns. There was anxiety around returns getting lost in the post.

  6. The word “minimalism” was used a lot when participants described how they wanted the post-purchase emails to look. This falls in line with how customers currently use emails, taking a glance at emails but not reading beyond what they deem necessary.

  7. They did not want the email to look computer-generated and said it would make them feel like the brand thought of them as a sale rather than a person.

  8. All participants understood that mistakes happen, but they wanted to know when things do not go smoothly as soon as possible.

  9. An email should clearly state the issue and why it happens when something goes wrong. They also expect an apology and be told what is being done about it.

  10. Emails were still the preferred method of communication over app notifications and SMS.

3. Wireframing

After gathering insight from interviews and looking at the emails the users said provided a good or bad experience, I then wireframed new emails. I also got help from a UX Content designer who focused on the TOV and a UI Designer. 

We came up with six high fidelity emails that I could then to take into unmoderated testing.

  1. Purchase confirmation

  2. Refund expectation

  3. Cancellation of order

  4. Delays (to dispatch)

  5. Split deliveries

  6. Payment detail updates

4. Unmoderated testing

For unmoderated testing, I used UzerZoom to test emails with 40 participants. They were asked to vocalise what they saw and then took a short survey asking them about their preference and preferred tone of voice. They were asked how reassured they would feel after receiving the email, how much they understood and if anything was missing.

I analysed and compared the data gathered from unmoderated testing using Miro. The findings confirmed some of our initial thoughts but allowed us to refine what was needed for the toolkit.

5. Creating the tool kit

I broke down the proposed emails into 74 components. These components would be a set of blocks that can be pulled together and rearranged. I also included rules to help the client govern the post-purchase experience.

Each type of email came with a list of components. Some components belong to specific emails, while others could be used for multiple emails, like the sign-off or footer components.

 

Takeaways

We went slightly over budget because the amount of collaboration time needed was not accounted for. Throughout this project, I needed to go over my findings with my internal team a few times.

Outcomes

As we found out during stakeholder interviews, there is red tape when it comes to implementing changes. My team did not hear back from the client about this particular project right away. They let us know six months later that they had started rolling out the new post-purchase emails and that we could start seeing our work the next time we order something from them. 😊

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