Leading Furniture Retailer – Optimizing a Leading Retailer’s Customer-centric Commerce Experience
Reimagining the Web-to-Print Roadmap
Office Supply Retail Company
With approximately 1,000 retail locations nationwide, this office supply retail company is one of the world’s most well-known office supply brands. Even with the rise of ecommerce competitors and free design sites, they continue to differentiate itself with personalized customer service and a strong presence both in-store and online.
Rightpoint executed a unique, research-driven project to help them better prioritize their web-to-print roadmap to a more seamless, omnichannel customer experience.
Services
Starting with a Strategy
Many small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) rely on this office supply retail company for cost-effective and accessible printing and marketing services, including business cards, advertising labels, signs, flyers, and more. They choose them for its long-standing reputation and convenient features like same-day pickup and an in-store business center.
“One of the differentiators for this brand is their consultative approach and the power of the brick and mortar store,” said Pippa Bradberry, Product Design Director at Rightpoint.
“We realized how powerful the company associates are in helping customers get what they’re looking for, but the in-person consultative service wasn’t reflected in the existing digital platform,” Bradberry said.
The brand’s website didn’t offer the same intuitive, transparent experience today’s SMEs and online customers crave. Research revealed that many users were frustrated with the site’s lack of usability and transparency.
This pain point led them to Rightpoint to develop a focused and concise goal:
Drive sales growth through a connected digital experience — one that’s focused on the needs of creators now and in the future
Rightpoint sought to reimagine their online print services in a way that put the digital platform on par with the store, creating a competitive differentiation by solving for the moments that matter to customers.
Overcoming funnel friction
To achieve this goal, Rightpoint conducted ongoing, in-depth research with a diverse set of qualitative and quantitative methods, including a diary study, top-of-funnel user study, and 15 hours of in-store observation.
The research informed and validated their future state vision, offering a clear and insightful picture of the creator journey. It also revealed key areas of opportunity to overcome funnel friction.
Enhancing discoverability and driving confidence early in the experience
According to Rightpoint’s research, 86% of customers shop by comparison, exploring features and pricing before choosing a print provider and building a product. Most customers visit a website less than two times, and they’re unlikely to convert after their initial comparison shopping session.
For this reason, the website needed to make a strong brand connection early on in the shopping experience, with easy tools for discovering print options, pricing, and project timelines. However, some customers struggled to understand the brand’s offerings. Even after choosing a product, they would encounter usability issues and confusion on pricing and availability, ultimately leading them to use another print provider.
With this in mind, this project focused on helping customers intuitively navigate to products they need and inspire them to engage beyond the home page.
Showcasing value and price throughout the journey
Initially, some print service customers may have struggled to understand the value and pricing of their printing project while using the builder tool. From user session research, Rightpoint learned that 20% of users looped back from the builder to a product page or homepage in search of this crucial information.
Users who finished the building process sometimes abandoned their printing project in the final stages, saying the pricing or delivery time surprised them. Others might complete the project and schedule pickup in-store, only to discover that the final product didn’t align with their initial vision.
“People would get to the end of the experience and the project wouldn’t come to life as they expected,” said Larysa Nadolny, Associate Director of Research at Rightpoint. “They really didn’t understand the pricing and options for the project until the tail end.”
Based on these findings, Rightpoint saw a need to better showcase value and pricing options throughout the journey.
Work
To tackle these hurdles, the Rightpoint team elected to focus on discoverability, transparency, and visibility. With improvements in these areas, they could better manage customer perceptions and close the gap between online and printed projects.
Improving price and value transparency
“Transparency was a huge part of what was lacking before,” said Bradberry. “So we focused on questions like, ‘How can we make sure the value and price of the product is consistently transparent?’ and ‘How do we allow users to customize to their heart’s content as they could in the store?’”
Ultimately, the website needed to help creators intuitively navigate to products they’re interested in and get started more quickly. This could be achieved by:
Highlighting real customer projects for inspiration
Creating personalized landing pages for return users in the logged-in state
Elevating popular product categories in a hierarchy for discoverability
Personalizing product recommendations
Cross-selling from product pages
Creating a more mobile-friendly design
Not only would these features make the experience more efficient for the customer — they would also enhance the employee experience, reducing the time store associates spend communicating with online customers and reprinting incorrect orders.
Enhancing the path forward
Rightpoint also helped them illuminate the future vision for their ongoing website updates. One example is a “Get Started” feature that allows users to browse, build, and learn on the fly. This feature would help creators get comfortable with what’s available at the start their project and replicate the in-store consultative approach to choosing and customizing a product.
“We helped them validate things they already knew and elevate things that needed to be more top-of-mind. We directed their product roadmap and envisioned new ways they could be serving small and midsize enterprises.”
Pippa Bradberry
Product Design Director at Rightpoint
Outcomes
After combing through countless data sources, interviews, research themes, and customer quotes, Rightpoint worked with them to help establish itself as an industry leader in omnichannel print and marketing services. Rightpoint’s research clearly outlined the journey of SMEs, combining qualitative and quantitative data to focus on the best ways to empower content creators.
“What’s special about this project isn’t some grand data point,” said Nadolny. “It’s that this project was so obviously omnichannel, with both online and face-to-face elements. We acted as the lens to laser-focus on improvements most impactful for small business owners. We pulled the team together behind a unified vision of what their website could be.”
