Redesigning an online rental marketplace - Mutterfly
Company overview
Mutterfly is an online rental marketplace for premium products. You can rent laptops, cameras and accessories, Playstations, gaming consoles, and various other party products starting at just 1% of its price. I redesigned the website to improved the overall experience of renting a product on Mutterfly’s website.
Stakeholder Interviews, Usability testing, Journey maps, Competitor Analysis, Ideation, Sketching, Wireframing, Prototyping, Card sorting, Tree testing, Information Architecture, Design System
The design process
A Journey towards the solution
The problem
Even though being an active rental market place for around 4 years, Mutterfly, was facing the problem of acquiring new users to rent products from their platform. I was tasked to redesign their platform to overcome these issues.
The overarching design challenge
Redesign Mutterfly’s online rental platform to help the business increase their profits, decrease the overall bounce rate and attract more customers by providing them a smooth & hassle free renting experience.
The solution
I redesigned the end to end experience of renting a product on Mutterfly’s platform. It included creating a design system, redefining the information architecture & the user flow, adding microinteractions & changing the overall look & feel of the website.
The process
But, How did I actually get to the solution?
Business goals
The business needed to...
I conducted interviews with 6 senior employees of the organization to understand the current status of the business, problems faced by the business and their expectations from this redesign.
01
Establish renting as a norm
02
Acquire new customers who are willing to make a purchase
03
Retaining the acquired & existing customers
04
Generating profit
Customer Research
Customer Research uncovered 3 main painpoints
I analysed the reviews given by our current customers on Google, conducted a usability test and a tree test with new customers to identify the painpoints faced by them in their journey to rent a product from Mutterfly’s platform.
#1 Inconsistent Designs
Users encountered inconsistencies in the designs which made them question the brand and the idea.
#2 Difficulty navigating
Users encountered inconsistencies in the designs which made them question the brand and the idea.
#3 Lack of trust
Users had a lot of doubts about the quality, price and process which weren't answered through the website
Solving customer problems can help solve the business' problems
The customer problems were mapping to the business’ problems. I realised that if I could solve the issues faced by the customers while interacting with Mutterfly, the business’ problems could be resolved.
Journey mapping
Let’s zoom in and look closely at the painpoints.
Design Opportunities
Translating customer painpoints into design opportunities
Encountered breaks in flows & inconsistent design patterns
How might we deliver a consistent experience?
Faced difficulty navigating and discovering products
How might we improve the discoverability of products?
Did not trust Mutterfly for the quality of products & service
How might we build trust amongst customers?
Opportunity #1
How might we deliver a consistent experience?
Older designs
Scrutinizing the cause of inconsistent experience
Ideation
To solve this issue, I decided to create a library of components
The issue could be resolved if the brand guidelines were defined and the design elements used across the website were tethered to those guidelines. Thus, I decided to create a design system which will be a library of consistent design elements.
Solution
Giving our brand a personality
Our target audience was the millennial generation, hence we wanted our brand to reflect a cool vibe. Since we are a renting platform, we wanted to select colours which were cool but warm enough to reflect trust.
No warmth, very dark & dull
Very monochromatic, cool, but dull
Very bright, too much warmth.
Warm, Cool and vibrant
Solution
Building a design system
To ensure consistency of design elements across the website, I built a design system.
Opportunity #2
How might we improve the discoverability of products?
Older designs
Scrutinizing the issues in discoverability of products
Information Architecture
It was difficult to find products under the current category names!
Gaming consoles were placed in the party category and electronics only had computers. The word “premium” did not hint anything about the products inside the category!
Information Architecture
So, I redefined the information architecture!
Party changed to Gaming, since it consisted products like consoles & video games.
Electronics changed to Computers since we only had laptops, tablets, phones & PCs
Premium changed to Entertainment. Some products from “Part” category were also moved here.
I also introduced sub-categories for better findability.
Ideation & design decisions
Sketching out ideas for a navigation & a search!
I brainstormed some possible solutions to improve the search and navigation experience of the customers on the Mutterfly’s website. I also took feedback from different members of the team to understand their perspectives on my design and then I made decisions.
Solution
Introducing a new navigation bar
I redesigned the navigation bar & provided it a cleaner look and feel, made the search bar more prominent and also reduced the amount of negative space.
Solution
Introducing a faster & efficient search
I redesigned the end-to-end search experience on Mutterfly for enhancing the discoverability of products.
Opportunity #3
How might we build trust amongst customers?
The problem
The customers were unsure about the quality of products they want to rent
We did not sell new products, instead they were secondhand given for rent. Our customer research revealed that since they were not able to experience the look and feel of the products, they were unsure about the quality of the same.
Ideation
Designing elements to build trust
To solve the problem of lack of trust in the user's journey, I ideated the following design elements which could be added across the website to build trust.
High-Fidelity Prototypes
The final, shipped website designs
User Testing
Evaluating the designs with the users
Before I could make the final designs, I decided to test the wireframes with some users of the Mutterfly website. Getting early feedback from the users could reduce my iteration and efforts in the later stages when designs are launched and shiped.
Think-aloud usability test (4 participants)
80% successful task completion
All 4 participants were are to make a successful purchase without any major break in their flow.
Tree testing (10 participants)
90% successful task completion
9/10 participants in the tree testing were able to find products in the right categories within the navigation
Heat maps - After launch
Where are the users clicking, moving & scrolling on the page?
I used heatmaps to understand and analyse the areas where the customers interact of our website. This was done using a tool called Hotjar. The results from the heatmaps validated a few design decisions which i had made.
Data from clickmaps
92% customers were clicking on the key page elements as we anticipated!
Data from movemaps
Customers were checking out the given information as we anticipated!
Data from scrollmaps
Average 60% customers scrolled till the end of the website.
Impact - After launch
And the business achieved it's goals!
We used google analytics to track our success. After launch we saw a significant improvement in our profits, bounce rate and number of customers
Total revenue increase by 75%
The revenue after 6 months of launch showed a 75% increase as compared to the last 6 months of using old design.
89.6% revenue in first 6 months!
The new website also has already generated 89.6% of the total revenue from last year (2020) in the first 6 months of launch in 2021.
Bounce rate reduced by 41%
The launch of new website reduced the bounce rate of the overall website from 46.61% to 27.5%.
Total customers increased by 5000
The launch of the new website acquired 5000 new customers who made their first purchase with mutterfly.
Customer Reviews
The customers were loving the designs!
Retrospective
Reflecting on my learnings!
1
User needs are important, but so are the business’
While sketching, I came up with many ideas which could work very well for the customers but were not good for the business. My solution needed to balance the user needs and the business needs.
2
Using stakeholder specific language while presenting
Using stakeholder specific jargon while talking to different team members in the project made me present my ideas better to them.
3
A good rationale and data bolstered my design decisions
When I had rationale and data for the design decisions which I took, my thinking and approach was clearer.
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