What essential information does the customer need for making a well-informed decision when purchasing a garden tractor?
- Client work
- Agency: Electric Studio
- Year: 2020
- Duration: 2 Months
- My Role: Site Audit, User research, Wire Framing, UI / UX Design, Prototyping
Context
Countax is a British manufacturing success story. Situated on the outskirts of Oxford, Countax has led the way in the design and manufacture of garden tractors and ride on lawn mowers for over 30 years.
Their commitment to innovation has been a driving force behind their enduring success in the industry.
The Challenge
Countax felt that their website was not representative of the premium product range they offered. Our goal then was to design and build a responsive website that provided greater visibility to their products and distributors, while remaining faithful to their well established brand identity.
Designing the Solution
Research & Planning
To start, we provided a brief questionnaire to the Countax marketing team. They were responsible for conducting user interviews on our behalf and providing audio recordings of the sessions for analysis. With data collected from over 10 hours of interviews, we were able to discern distinct patterns. While Countax was primarily positioned as a B2C brand (with the Ariens range catering to the B2B market), a significant number of landscapers and local authorities were purchasing Countax products at that time.
What also emerged from the data gathered was the variation in the significance of product attributes across different user archetypes. Ride-on comfort and feel received high ratings from private owners. On the other hand, ease of maintenance was rated most important by businesses that owned six or more machines. Noise level on the other hand was identified as a crucial factor for local authorities.
An additional challenge, therefore, lay in designing the website while remaining mindful of the business’s objectives, without discouraging the existing customer base.
Information architecture
The Countax website faced significant challenges, notably the absence of a primary navigation component, making navigation confusing and hindering user experience. Additionally, information pages held equal prominence (both hierarchically and visually) to product pages, causing user confusion in differentiating their significance.
The primary goal was to ease cognitive load on users, which involved creating a clear distinction between product and information pages, enhancing the overall user journey. Scalability was also a key consideration, ensuring the structure could accommodate future content growth. The redesign aimed to establish a coherent hierarchy, guiding users seamlessly and offering a more intuitive browsing experience.
UI Designs
Much more focus was placed on product images both in isolation and in situ, aimed not only to spotlight the products themselves but also to weave a compelling narrative around the enriching lifestyle benefits of owning a garden tractor & to establish an emotional connection with the audience.
To compliment and provide a visual hook to key information (such as product benefits and features), I created a set of bespoke icons to replace the stock imagery used previously.
Reflections
In hindsight, I recognise that there were untapped opportunities during the research and planning phase of the project that could have been better utilised. These opportunities could have allowed us to bring forward the most crucial information for each distinct user type.
Nonetheless, Countax experienced a notable surge in both traffic and sales following the website’s launch in 2020 and 2021. While we can’t attribute this growth solely to the revamped website alone, as external factors such as customers spending more time at home during this period could have played a substantial role. The reality likely involves a combination of both factors!