TL;DR
Product: a site that makes it easy for people to search for and connect with the best vendors for their next event.
Research method: Usability testing, competitive analysis,
Findings: The mission of Picabash needed a better way to be promoted, it got lost in the website, the primary user wanted to think less when filling out forms and the secondary user wanted the customer information at a glance.
Solution: Created wireframes with clear and consistent feedback, created less necessary form filling for the user, suggested more scannable content for the users.
Picabash
The founder of Picabash was a busy working mom looking to plan her child's birthday party. She struggled to hire local businesses owned by Women and People of color. Picabash was created because the founder understood the need to promote these underrepresented communities and she made it her goal to find a way to do this. The website needed to be a one-stop-shop for consumers looking to plan their party while also giving vendors a platform to promote their businesses.
Why Not Just Use Google?
I saw value in the website, but there needed to be a better way to leverage other resources to increase the number of vendors on the site. Google doesn’t let you search vendors using the criteria of being owned by Women/POC, and they don’t make it easy to support underrepresented businesses. I gave myself an hour to test this out using Google. Would it be possible to plan a birthday party with these parameters? The answer was no. I couldn’t determine who owned the business I was looking at, or find event-related vendors promoting their services online. During my research I discovered some competitors. The competition also struggled with executing this great idea.
The Catch 22
During remote usability testing, I heard from a participant that there weren’t enough vendors on the site for her to make an informed decision about something big like a venue for her wedding. How could Picabash increase the number of vendors they have on their site? One participant I interviewed said that vendors, like himself, would gladly use the site if they thought they could get business from it. When we spoke with a vendor from Picabash, she mentioned she hadn’t gotten any clients from the site. She also explained in great detail how difficult the sign-up process was for her. She told us she spent over 4 hours adding her information and eventually stopped even though she knew there was still more she could’ve done to make her profile more appealing. When we asked her to elaborate on the process, she said it was “Painful. Very painful.” You could see the frustration in her eyes. Besides learning the vendors’ struggles, the participants looking to plan an event frequently mentioned how few results there were. Customers aren’t likely to keep using the site if they aren’t finding any results. They would immediately abandon Picabash and go to Google. So, if customers need more vendor options and vendors need customers, how could this problem be resolved?
“Painful. Very Painful. ”
1st Impressions
Proposed redesign to include People of Color in photographs
The website’s home page was not well received by the participants we interviewed. One participant told us “The stock images make this website feel Spam-y”. The script we made, to interview the users, focused a great deal on the overall impression of the site. When questioned about the POC/Women value, a participant mentioned the lack of diversity in the carousel images located on the homepage.
This was an easy solve and one I would recommend fixing right away. This requires some additional help from vendors and customers alike. Picabash could consider asking their customers to share some ot the photos taken from events planned using the website. This would give the feeling of authenticity that the website is lacking and also give it the diversity it’s missing.
“The stock images make this website feel Spammy”
Usability Tests at Fathom Consulting
What’s the Point?
Another common theme emerged during my heuristic analysis of the site. The amount of text on the ‘About’ page made every person on the team completely skip over all of it. I interviewed a participant that said, “To be honest, I didn’t read the wall of text”. Picabash also had a short video on the page giving the viewer an explanation. All of the 15 participants we interviewed during testing skipped the video. And even after we asked what they thought was the purpose of Picabash, they never mentioned the video. We received countless comments about never seeing anything explaining the purpose of the site. One of the vendors we interviewed also mentioned he didn’t know how to actually sign up. This information was also located on the text-heavy ‘About’ Page. To us, the solution was clear as day.
“To be honest, I didn’t read the wall of text”
Recommendations
Current ‘About’ Page
‘About’ Page Proposal
Scannability is key
In my proposal, I recommended fewer words on the ‘About’ page. This would allow the user to scan the page more easily. There could also be an ‘About the founder’ link in the footer if people were interested in learning more about her. This would allow about 1/3 of the content on the about page to live on its own page dedicated to learning more about Astrid. I suggested the video be moved to a platform more suitable for video, like their Instagram account. If people are already on Instagram seeing videos in their feed, I expect someone will be more willing to watch it there. Users weren’t coming to the site looking to watch a video. Finally, I would propose editing down the words in the 4 step process to be briefer. This could still maintain the voice and tone of the brand but add more of a punch! And I proposed introducing a ‘Get listed’ button below the 4 step process to provide a clear call to action.
“Why would I name my event, that’s weird!”
When we asked users to fill out the ‘Start your search’ form, we heard time and time again that the user didn’t want to name their party. What if the user was just perusing vendors? It felt like a large commitment so early in the relationship. One participant kept trying to skip that required form field. When she finally realized she had to fill it out, she remarked with a rhetorical tone, “Why would I name my event, that’s weird!” The form field named ‘Event Categories’ also confused the user. One woman thought the choices were either too specific or too broad. As her office’s holiday party planner, she really liked the ‘Budget’ form field and said: “This is really helpful”. I’d recommend finding a solution that allowed us to keep some of the forms as-is but adjust the more confusing ones.
Current vendor search form
Current Form & proposed paired down form
Fewer Required Form Fields
An easy change would be making it optional for a customer to have to name an event. At this time, there aren’t enough vendors to support the number of form fields offered. If you limit the category filtering, the user will see more results. This could be beneficial for the early stages of this site. Including the budget field—but not making it a requirement—proved to be something one participant really liked. So, while I’m proposing the form field be paired down, I do think this one optional field is beneficial and adds value to the site. I also would recommend doing a card sorting activity with some participants to better understand what category would be.
Get Listed Already.
We observed the participants not finding the vendor and client communication pages. A vendor would spend hours creating an account, only to arrive at the next page with a form to create an account… even though they had already created one. There was no confirmation that told them they were successful in creating a new account. As a vendor, in order to see pertinent information (customer inquiries and the vendor dashboard) they had to click the carrot on the upper corner of the screen and leave the form that they had already previously filled out. One participant we interviewed said “This is all the information I want to see and it’s lost in a small dropdown. This should be on my landing page.” I couldn’t agree with him more. This is especially true if the expectation of Picabash was for the vendors to respond to their customers’ requests within a 24-hour time frame.
“This is all the information I want to see and it’s lost in a small dropdown. This should be on my landing page.”
Current state of Vendor Log-in
Recommended state of ‘vendor portal’ page
In Conclusion
Users want to see the diversity and inclusion that makes Picabash stand out as different from another search engine. Help vendors by providing appropriate feedback when a task is completed , and give them instructions on how to bulk up their profiles. Pair down the search bar to give the user more results while allowing casual browsing by eliminating the user to name event.If these fixes are made, I would also suggest another round of usability testing to continue improving the site and hopefully gaining more vendors and customers in the process. I’ve included the raw data of all the interviews and affinity diagram if further investigation into this case study is desired.