Retailio
2022-23
Mobile App
PL Brand Stores
A discovery and exploratory experience for private label brands on Retailio
OVERVIEW
Retailio is India’s fastest growing B2B ordering platform connecting pharma retailers with their distributors seamlessly.
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Brand Stores feature is redesigned to improve discoverability and conversion for private label products and promote user participation in brand-specific loyalty programs/promotional campaigns
ROLE
User Research
UX & UI Design
Testing
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METHODS
Research
Data Analysis
Conceptualization
Ideation
User Interactions
Stakeholder Feedback
Wireframing
Prototyping
STAKEHOLDERS
Product Managers
Developers
Retailers and Salesman
QA
Business Leaders
The Reason
Why did we do it?
Four months post launch of the Liveasy Loyalty Program, a campaign to drive private label products, it was observed to be on a descending traction. After tracking and analyzing the in-app user engagement on LLP it became obvious that there was a major flaw somewhere in the user journey. Further deep diving concluded that the conversion rates for the app users were way lower than the offline users (Salesman channel).
Rio Salesmen drove 65% of the total Gross Merchandise Value of INR 12.5 Cr between December '21 and April '22 for the Liveasy brand. This was an interesting discovery given the fact that a fleet of less than a thousand Salesmen topped a prospective cohort of over 150 thousand Retailio app users. Moreover, the percentage decrease in Retailio app orders for Liveasy private label was going up by the day.
How did we do it?
Project approach and stakeholder management
#1
DISCOVERING
USER PAIN POINTS
Collaborated with the UX Research Lead to map out a plan and uncover user insights from one on one moderated user interviews
#4
DESIGNING
& TESTING
Putting together user flows and creating working prototypes to test with end users to validate product usability. Working on feedback to iterate and improve on the user experience.
#2
DATA
ANALYSIS
Analyzed LivEasy products sales data and compared channel-wise contribution to GMV to identify gaps in current experience
#5
DESIGN WORKING
SESSIONS
Creating high-fidelity mockups and prototypes of user flows based on all targeted user stories to tech stakeholders. Collaborating with Product and tech counterparts to define functional feasibilities and design interactions accordingly.
#3
SALESMAN
RESEARCH
Interacted with Salesmen (Retailio Partners) cohorts to uncover the working strategy behind their success of driving 65% of total GMV
on Liveasy sales.
The design process
A user-centric approach was applied via the design thinking framework as outlined below. We undertook user research by conducting moderated user interviews to discover the user pain points with the existing experience. High-level data analysis was undertaken to recognize the considerable contribution of the salesman channel towards the total GMV of Liveasy private label. Ultimately, after re-mapping the goals based on our research findings, we followed a user-centric approach to re-design the brand store and LLP experience for existing and newly targeted user cohorts to deliver an evolved user experience.
Problem
Research
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Launch
The Problem
How might we
Increase the visibility of PL brands like LivEasy on the Retailio app?
Improve discoverability of PL(LivEasy) to drive retailers to LLP
Ideate and conceptualize to bring better feature visibility via numerous discovery points across viable touchpoints across the user journey.
Pitch Liveasy as a less orthopedic only brand to retailers
Make retailers aware of products range other than Ortho and few OTC products.
Educate the new user about the PL brand
Focus on building brand value by educating the user about the brand values and its USP of High Margins.
Support the retailers in promoting the Liveasy brand to end consumers
Retailer’s personal experience of the brand increases trust and boosts their confidence to promote it to the end consumers.
Research
User Insights
We reached out to the identified user cohorts to understand their pain points with the LLP and figure out their motivators to order Liveasy
Study background
We observed that 9711 Retailers who enrolled in the Liveasy Loyalty Program have been dormant for the past couple of weeks. Dormant refers to Retailers who have purchased Liveasy products before but have not placed any order in the last 4-8 weeks.
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Also, 20942 Retailers who also enrolled in the program have never ordered LivEasy products since the time the feature went live in the last week of December 2021.
Target cohorts
We interacted with retailers falling under 2 Categories.
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Retailers who are actively participating in the campaign.
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Retailers who are dormant,i.e, they are not ordering for the past 30 days.
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Taking into consideration the Enrollment date, Number of products purchased, Types of products purchased, Rewards redeemed, Product value(GMV), and Last order date to shortlist the participants.
We were not able to speak to the 3rd cohort of users who enrolled in the campaign but never ordered Liveasy products due to the unavailability of data.
Methodology
We surveyed a sample size of 80 to understand Retailers' perspectives about LivEasy as a brand and how they view LLP campaigns. It was also a means to recruit prospective participants for in-depth interviews.
Qualitative Analysis
The conversations took place with 9 Users. Duration ranged from 40 minutes to 80 mins.
* Calls included audio (telephonic discussions) and video sessions on Google Meet.
Research
Findings
Retailer survey findings
The initial survey that was conducted with 80 Retailers helped us understand the following from an end user's POV of LivEasy as a brand, its product line and the promotional campaign.
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Retailers learned about the Liveasy Loyalty Program mostly via their distributors & Rio salesman partners and not via the mobile app.
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Motivations behind joining the program -
a. Distributor and Executive's(Rio salesman partner) recommendation.
b. High Margin on Liveasy product range.
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Most of the Retailers haven't redeemed any rewards to date.
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Frequently bought LivEasy products are Ortho and Surgicals. Some of the competitors are Vissco, Tynor, and Flamingo.
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Sales for Liveasy Product -
a. Customers are not familiar with LivEasy.
b. No Demand for LivEasy products.
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Reduction in the purchase of LivEasy products -
a. No Demand for LivEasy products.
b. Quality issues and Customer complaints. Competitors are better given the same price range.
The initial survey that was conducted with 80 Retailers helped us understand the following from an end user's POV of LivEasy as a brand, its product line and the promotional campaign.
​
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Retailers learned about the Liveasy Loyalty Program mostly via their distributors & Rio salesman partners and not via the mobile app.
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Motivations behind joining the program -
a. Distributor and Executive's(Rio salesman partner) recommendation.
b. High Margin on Liveasy product range.
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Most of the Retailers haven't redeemed any rewards to date.
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Frequently bought LivEasy products are Ortho and Surgicals. Some of the competitors are Vissco, Tynor, and Flamingo.
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Sales for Liveasy Product -
a. Customers are not familiar with LivEasy.
b. No Demand for LivEasy products.
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Reduction in the purchase of LivEasy products -
a. No Demand for LivEasy products.
b. Quality issues and Customer complaints. Competitors are better given the same price range.
Insights from depth interviews
Low campaign awareness
The offline and in-app visibility of the LLP campaign is low.
Most users only learnt about the brand via direct distributor interaction.
LLP reward value disconnect
Retailers don't find the Liveasy campaign rewards worthy against the amount of purchases they need to make.
The salesman factor
Salesmen use their personal rapport to push retailers into purchasing Liveasy products to help complete their target.
Minimum sales effort
Retailers prefer stocking brands which require minimum marketing and convincing unlike Liveasy
Brand value
Retailers are concerned about the risk associated with a new Brand and are not confident enough to take risks with a new brand.
Product range visibility
Retailers are unaware of any other products other than Ortho and a few OTC products.
Research
Evaluation
Studying the existing experience
Today retailers can explore LivEasy brand products through the following recommendation properties via widgets and search flow on the Retailer App;
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Search- Roughly daily 200 searches from 130 unique retailers
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Liveasy Store- 74 daily visits from Liveasy Loyalty Program landing page via "Explore Liveasy products" CTA.
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Whereas daily Add to Cart < 5 from LivEasy Store, irrespective of the source the retailer came from.​
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LivEasy store shows the entire list of brand catalogs with this listing logic
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Alphabetical Ranking
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WeeklySalesVolume(Descending)
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SearchDataPoints.mappedDistributorBatchesCountDescending
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MRP - Descending
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Last updated date
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Low Discoverability
The current user journey has only 2 start points.
The first is a carousel hero banner on Retailio Homepage and the second is a Liveasy Loyal Program Points tracker that appears in the 2nd/3rd fold of the homepage. Because of the numerous promotional banners populated on a rotational basis and suspected banner blindness, most users denied seeing any Liveasy-related banner when enquired.
Lack of product visibility
The journey was designed around the Loyalty Program. Since the very idea was to upsell using a reward motivation strategy. This however didn't materialize as the users were mostly in it for the higher margin and deemed the rewards as not worthy because of the value
Navigation failure
The navigation to the brand store is located deep inside the LLP page. The user has to scroll down multiple times to be able to reach the CTA in order to navigate to the Liveasy Brand Store.
Flat Experience in Brand store
The brand store wasn't structured to cater to different user cohorts. Specifically for a new user, it didn't help drive any conversion. The store today has a very flat structure which only promotes a high intent search-based experience.
Lack of discoverability, a static product listing view, and a lack of exploratory indulgence. Retailers have limited access to explore the brand catalog and understand the width and depth of the product line. Additionally, the brand store is a subset of the LLP flow. Upon interaction with the users, we found that it was a non-driving factor for conversion.
Define
Users
Who are our target users and what are their
motivations?
Data collected for the time period: 1st April - 11 July 2022
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Following are the primary motivations of retailers purchasing Liveasy products
#1
LUCRATIVE OFFERS & MARGINS
Retailers thrive on margins and higher margins on Liveasy product range was a business strategy that worked in favor.
#3
FAIR QUALITY
PRODUCTS
The product quality has improved since the time of launch. A few quality-related complaints did pop up here and there but the product range has been positively received by the end user.
#2
PRODUCT
RANGE
Having launched with under 10 products initially in 2018-19, The Liveasy product range has grown today to 600+ spread over 9 categories
#4
AFTER SALES
SUPPORT
The Salesman channel has really been able to bank on the fact that they are able to provide the last mile delivery and return services. This helped boost retailers confidence on Liveasy.
Ideate
Functional structuring
Information Architecture
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Ideate
Low Fidelity Sketches
Digital Wireframes
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Incentivizing
the users via gamification
A real-time progress tracker to motivate the user to order more and win rewards.​
Variant #2
Brand store landing-
New user
This variant was conceptualized to be more informative. We understood from the research initiative that most retailers were in it for the higher margins and knew very less about the brand or the product range.
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The idea here was to create a brand recall value via an educative approach.
Better visibility on product range
As users perceived Liveasy to be a very Orthocare-specific brand, it was a conscious decision to educate the user about the various categories of products available under the brand umbrella via a dedicated Categories widget to aid exploration.
Product based widgets
The fact that the existing brand store experience consisting of a list view with no customization didn't aid conversion was required to be addressed.
So to uplift the browsing experience we ideated introducing product-based widgets to help boost a discovery-based experience.
Variant #3
Brand store landing-
New user
This variant was a derivative of Variant 2 and on a similar concept of informative decision-making.
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A sleeker categories widget to enable better range visibility in the first fold.
Help users to make a buying decision based on social proofing
We knew from the user research that most first-time Liveasy ordering users converted via direct Distributor and Salesman promotional pitches because of their rapport with them.
The idea here was to recreate the same in the mobile app.
Additionally, we also conceptualized a virtual cart experience that helped the new user with decision-making for their first order.
More control to the user
Rather than populating multiple widgets based on a variety of recommendation algorithms. We imagined an experience that would aid lateral discovery and empower the user with more control over their exploratory experience.
Search and explore
A real-time upgrade to the existing brand store search experience to aid an exploratory experience and boost conversion.
Lead users into exploring the entire product range
Allowing the user to control how and when they want to explore the brand catalog and browse from a range of categories.
Brand store landing-
Repeat user
For the repeat user, the experience would be centered around their progress around the Liveasy Loyalty Program milestone tracker. And make them order every week by curating customized limited-time deals and offers.
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Variant #1
Brand store landing-
New user
This variant was conceptualized to promote the brand using 1st order offer and Loyalty Program Rewards loop.
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The idea here was to uplift the existing journey based on a rewarding strategy.
Prototype
The development handover
What the final experience shaped into
THE LIVEASY BRAND STORE
Takeaways
The Learnings
Key learnings from the project as a UX designer
Go back to the user often for feedback
Make informed decisions by always going back to the user for validation whenever you're stuck or are in an indecisive situation.
Re-strategize based on user insights
Spend time understanding the user's behavior and empathizing with their pain points. This will help build a deeper understanding of the user and design based on the user's needs.
Navigation is the cornerstone of usability
It’s the main interaction technique on the Internet. Having a good navigation is crucial for ensuring that users can find what they’re looking for and reduce friction.
Avoid information overload
Consider letting the user decide on how they want to navigate through a journey. Guide users throughout, but always make them feel that they are in control. Don't serve everything to the user all at once. Let them discover their way around the journey.
Reduce user’s journey to destination
Always keep the three-click rule in mind, which says that your users should never be more than three clicks away from what they are looking for.
Discoverability can aid conversion
Design discovery points based on the user's motivation. Each user is different and will react to messages differently. Customize their experience accordingly.