This project at a glance

Background

Tavour wanted to figure out how to grow their revenue and increase customer engagement.

What I did

Improved the customer experience with a redesigned app and landing page.

Results

25% increase in monthly revenue (an 80x ROI, so far)

Key Takeaway

User research arms you with powerful insights into why customers buy. Investing in research helps you focus on features that matter and craft messaging that resonates clearly with your customer’s physical, emotional and philosophical needs.

My Role

Product designer

I led the redesign of a user first, business second iOS app for discovering awesome craft beer you can’t get in your area.

The Challenge

Design a user-friendly app that tells the Tavour story better

Tavour approached me with the goal of improving the existing app from a UX point of view so that people could:

• Quickly grasp the main value proposition
• Find new beers they want to try
• Easily buy those beers

Analysis

Figuring out where to start

To kick off this project I conducted a usability and heuristic review and walked the product team through the experience of signing up and using the app for the first time from the perspective of Devin, a craft beer drinker who heard about Tavour and is exploring the app for the first time.

This was helpful for a few reasons

1. It got the team thinking about things from the perspective of the user (though no user research had been done up to this point)
2. It allowed the team to see where the issues were in the app from a task and flow perspective

With a better sense of where the issues were I set out to develop a persona to better understand who users are and what problems they have that we could solve.

The User

Meet Kurt Collins

To keep my designs focused on solving user problems and I created a persona which would be used as a tool for reaching new customers and better serving existing ones.

Planning out the app

User flows

To ensure that designs would solve Kurt’s (the persona) problems I created ideal user flows centered around quickly helping users achieve their goals before jumping into designing.

After reviewing with the product team I began to sketch basic layouts.

Note: One takeaway from the research was that people loved how easy the app was to use. I felt that changing something that works for the sake of making it “better” would be risky from a business standpoint unless I have overwhelming data to support it. It is for this reason that I tried to keep much of the app similar while at the same time making small changes that would help accomplish the business goals.

Wireframing

Wireframes helped ensure the team had a shared understanding of designs. There were two rounds of wireframes and feedback with the product team which helped:

1. The product team and stakeholders feel invested in the design process
2. Avoid unintended surprises (unknown requirements and constraints)
3. Us stay focused on solving the problems of our users first, “design” second.

Prototype testing

Testing with new users

After creating a prototype I headed to SeaPine Brewing to see if people would be willing to give me a few minutes of their time. From testing with several brewery patrons, I gained valuable feedback about the design, what was working, and what needed work.

Prototype 1

After testing with several people at the brewery it was clear that usability was good, however, users didn’t understand how the Tavour app was different or why they should use it.

“There are only 4 beers?”

“I live by Chucks, I don’t know why I would use this app”

Prototype 2

Based on user feedback I updated the app to fix issues uncovered during testing

• Redesigned the onboarding to tell a better story and provide more context
• Improved headlines and labeling
• Improved product listings
• Added product alerts to better emphasize daily beers concept

After several rounds of user feedback and iterations, the app redesign was finalized and launched. Download the latest version here: iOS / Android

The next step was to create a new landing page. Using what we learned in research when creating the app, I dived into the landing page redesign opting to do validation via A/B testing.

The Results

Combined, the redesigned app and landing page together increased revenue by 25%.

I attribute this to the research we did up front. User research arms you with powerful insights into why customers buy. Investing in research helps you focus on features that matter and craft messaging that resonates clearly with your customer’s physical, emotional and philosophical needs.