UX Case study – Flower shopping online app

FLOWER SHOPPING APPLICATION

Short Description

Flowers as a gift is a common medium for expressing love and care. Thanks to the delivery services, the sender does not need to send the gift in person, and the recipient still comes as a surprise when obtaining the flowers on their special occasion. However, it is a hindrance for those living far from each other, 5-hour timezone difference, for instance, in the purchase and tracking process from the perspective of a new user.

The research findings should evaluate whether the design meets the desired values of the conceptual group of users living abroad, apparently propose possible solutions, and embody them.

This case study is primarily for the Vietnamese market, which focuses on a blossoming sector in eCommerce- the online flower business.

Role

I would love to make a mobile application version for a flower business with an IT foundation based on a loyal customer for every special occasion. Only flowers can deliver the true message and delight my beloved ones. The end-to-end experience on the mobile application will be crafted concretely due to the current flow from the website and suggestions on added-value features.

For confidentiality conditions, I will present the research concerning general problems of the current services provided by some businesses in this sector instead of redesigning a specific website or application.

Objectives

Online shopping frequency is rising due to the increase of eCommerce sites for this purpose in Vietnam. More and more products are supposed to appear on the online trade, indeed flowers. It would be nice if you have come across the shop some times before, or a colleague refers you to a reliable place to buy exquisite flowers with prompt delivery service as a surprise present for your mother’s birthday. However, for online buyers, it is another story.

After a few keywords on Google searching for online flower shopping in Vietnamese, I took 10 out of about 123 million results for this case study based on their popularity, SEO, and positive reviews. I had the opportunity to experience the services from 2 of them- one impressed me once I came across the shop when waiting for the traffic light with its brand name, and one was well-known thanks to the Shark Tank series a few years ago.

MAKING THE APP SHOPPABLE

In the current payment methods of some businesses, they prioritise the local buyers with a bunch of popular payment gateways in Vietnam, such as e-wallet (e.g. MOMO), those payment gateways cooperated with many big banks and domestic enterprises (e.g. VNPAY) to deal with transactions. Cash is king in Vietnam; hence, cash on delivery (COD) is the most common method if the sender and recipient is the same person. Multinational financial corporations’ credit/debit card, like Visa, MasterCard, American Express and so forth, is also an option for consumer to make purchases online. For those who are used to Paypal, I would like to add it in the list, too. Also, an update on status of the flowers is a plus for new users just booked the products and hope that it could come on time.

MORE INFORMATIVE DESCRIPTIONS

Most of the sites merely provide the name and number of flowers in the bouquet together with a short paragraph of its beautiful meaning in the product information box. I believe that adding more quantitative information such as measurements, care instructions, wrapper materials or some highlights will help the buyers easier to understand the product.

A FRESH FACE TO IMPROVE FOCUS

Top categories, without doubt, should be placed at the starting point for the user to navigate faster. Dense product’s photos and advertisements may overwhelm and distract the user, so I decided to add more space as well as optimise the mobile and landing page aesthetic for focus and clarity.

Based on data from those websites that I chose as guidelines for the mobile application, groups of products are categorized according to Sale campaigns, Collections, Occasions, Styles, and Plants. Indoor plant is a new rising segment in Vietnam online market because of the belief in feng shui, air-purifying needs, and decoration purpose. Also, I vaguely recognize that half of those websites are being built and run by local retailers, whereas others are international.
At first, there were two more categories- Flowers and Add-on gifts, which surprisingly most of the local retailers’ websites do have. However, I decided to get rid of Flowers because flowers are usually sold in different Styles with more than one type of flower. We can encourage the customer to explore the application more by going through other categories such as Collections, Occasions, etc. Otherwise, the customer flow may be shortened and lack some added values. On the other hand, Add-on gifts are now merged into the Checkout process and act as an emotional benefit rather than an obligatory element.

User Journey

Design Components

Hi-fi prototype

There are three versions for the HOME tab with a combination of swipe and scroll movements. They all support the idea of improving the focus. CTAs are descriptive and clear, customer’s rational benefit is put on top, and the obligatory categories are well-ordered by the traffic volume.

Shopping flow

My solutions for MORE INFORMATIVE DESCRIPTIONS objective are:

Adding quantity of stems per item beside the option of how many items.

Adding colour option for the bloom (or the accessories).

Keeping the description of the meaning of the item.

Adding more item’s details.

Suggesting more similar products according to style and occasion.

Here we come to the Checkout process, a crucial link in the chain to help the customer accomplish their desired tasks- shopping and sending flowers. In this conversion stage, I create only one opt-out option for the user if they have more actions to do in the application to keep them in the funnel. According to the specific characteristic of flower products, which are usually a present for someone other than yourself, the Shipping information must require more information input from the customer. I decided to put a step indicator to encourage the customer to keep completing the flow. Not only the step indicator, but the customer may also know the next step thanks to the descriptive buttons.
When the customer reaches this step and truly wants to get the product, I believe they will love to get the benefit of tracking their orders or discounts for the following purchases. An offer for creating an account linking to their Facebook or Gmail at this stage will help them shorten the time filling in the form, which makes this process more frictionless.

Viewed should be better than Wishlist in this case because seasonal sale campaigns are valid for a while, so does the promotion code. It is supposed to be a history page for the customer to come back and forth comparing those items that they are considering.
A feature that most of the online flower business in Vietnam does not have is reminding customers about upcoming events that they may want to send flowers to someone. For offices/hotels/restaurants etc., order flowers periodically. Events can support that idea somehow. An option to sync reminders to their mobile’s calendar by signing in to Google (or any popular social accounts) may be a good conversion.

Conclusion

There are a bunch of the same apps on Appstore (Vietnam location), but they all lack reviews from users. They tend to buy products at stores directly or via websites rather than download a specific application on their mobile devices. If I have more time and chance to work on this segment, finding the way to approach users from a new shopping method will be researched seriously.

Inspiration

Colour palette: Casa Sherpa

Interface: Zalando

Content structure: Zion W, Volodymyr Melnyk

Websites: Hoa yeu thuong, Dalat Hasfarm, Happy Flowers, Flower box, Ciao Flora, A Better Florist, Xinh tuoi, Hoa Sai Gon, 38 Flowers, lio Flowers

Photo library: unSplash

Apps from App Store: FW Flowers, Xinh Tuoi, Hoa Đất Sét Ngọc Điệp, flowerbooking, Bloom & Wild, FlowerCorner, CicekSepeti

Ngoc Nguyen