Creating Data-Driven Personas for Shippit
CLIENT BACKGROUND
Shippit: an online shipping platform for retailers.
Shippit is an online shipping platform for retailers that expedites the entire shipping process, connecting retailers with couriers and automating delivery and returns. It has a user base of hundreds of users, comprising small and large merchants.
THE PROBLEM
Shippit had a diverse user base of hundreds of merchants-- however, a lack of user research made it difficult to confirm hypotheses about which features to build.
Shippit's user base of merchants are highly diverse, ranging across industries, size, and e-commerce platforms. Shippit are in constant contact with their merchants and would hear from them whenever something went wrong, but at the time it had yet to conduct any official user research.
Identifying key user personas within their user base would enable the Product Designer to better understand who she was designing for, and enable her to prioritise features on their development road map.
DISCOVERY
How might we gain rich, in-depth data about Shippit's merchants in a way that is both time and cost-effective?
First, I interviewed the Product Designer to gain a background into Shippit and its users. I then spent time with the platform myself to understand the process a merchant goes through to complete key tasks.
Based on this initial discovery process, I highlighted three goals for this project:
- To find out more about Shippit’s users, specifically their goals and their pain points.
- To construct key user personas that would assist Shippit in categorising its diverse user base.
- To highlight areas for more in-depth research and development.
METHODOLOGY
I designed an interview survey with open-ended questions that inquired into user goals and pain points.
PROCESS
I interviewed a total of 8 merchants across different industries, iterating on my questionnaire after an initial pilot test.
Based on initial interviews, I learned that the principal user of Shippit was not necessarily the contact I had been given (usually the owner). Rather, this person's role within their organisation differed depending on the company: it could be the owner, the e-boutique manager, the warehouse manager, or the online manager.
I realised that in order to construct personas, I needed data about that principal user's role within their organisation. I amended my interview with the following questions: What are the biggest challenges in the day-to-day running of your business / job? On a regular working day, what are your primary goals?
WHAT I FOUND
While each merchant revealed similar goals, they all presented with unique needs and frustrations that did not overlap with that of other users.
My structured interview approach enabled me to group participant responses for each question. I found that Shippit's user base of merchants -- and the problems they presented with -- varied depending on the size of their organisation, the industry they were in, their e-commerce platform, and the principal user's role within the organisation.
Within a sample of 8 merchants, I isolated 15 discrete user pain points, and 17 different user suggestions for missing features. I compiled these into separate summary reports which I presented as an additional deliverable.
KEY THEMES
1. THE USER ON-BOARDING EXPERIENCE NEEDED IMPROVEMENT.
Multiple merchants cited a rocky beginning, specifically a lack of support and follow-up during the set-up process. This meant Shippit was losing money during this initial phase, as merchants were using other means to ship their orders out.
2. THE SHIPPIT PLATFORM WAS MISSING KEY FEATURES WHICH SIGNIFICANTLY IMPACTED USER GOALS.
For merchants who shipped larger quantities in particular, the lack of more robust search functionalities meant that they had to complete certain key tasks manually, significantly slowing down their workflow.
USER PERSONAS
Based on my interview data, I constructed three key personas.
RESULTS
1. SHIPPIT WILL LOOK INTO WAYS TO IMPROVE ITS ON-BOARDING PROCESS.
The Product Designer and the Customer Success Manager will look into ways to reduce friction in Shippit's on-boarding process, from a technical service perspective.
2. SHIPPIT CAN BETTER PRIORITISE FEATURES ON THEIR ROADMAP.
The Product Designer and Product Manager can now prioritise the features on their development roadmap, based on data gathered about the needs of principal users.
3. SHIPPIT HAVE A FOUNDATION OF USER DATA UPON WHICH THEY CAN BUILD, AND CLEAR DIRECTION FOR FUTURE RESEARCH.
Shippit's users can be bucketed in terms of industry, then by the size of their organisation and their role within it. Knowing this will allow them to conduct future research in a more structured and targeted way.
REFLECTION
To create more robust data-driven personas, I would target similar-sized merchants within the same industry.
The users that presented with the most similar goals, frustrations, and pressures were those who are trading in same industry with businesses of a similar scale: for example, large-scale merchants in retail fashion. In order to create more robust personas, I would target future research towards merchants of similar sizes and industries.
This means first sorting Shippit's entire user base of merchants by industry, followed by size. Users can then be filtered by other relevant factors, like e-commerce platform or payment plan. Shippit could then focus research efforts by conducting select interviews with similar merchants. This approach would make it easier for Shippit to gain further data to uncover new personas, or to validate hypotheses with existing personas in their user base.