Detailed case study
Ecommerce site redesign
Background
P&O ferries were looking to improve their online customer journeys and overall user experience in order to grow passenger numbers and increase revenue per passenger.
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Most commonly known for their cross-channel business, P&O Ferries also operate in the Irish Sea and the North Sea. These crossings had to be taken into consideration during the redesign.
The Team
This was an intense 6-week redesign project with myself, a researcher and project manager working on site in Dover, alongside development partner IBM, in a dedicated project room within P&O head office.
A large degree of research had already been undertaken and I came onboard towards the end of the persona generation.
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My remit:
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Running co-creation workshops with the core client team and senior stakeholders to explore user needs and business opportunities
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Creating a set of UX principles to guide the development of the new site
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Developing personas into user journeys for each booking scenario
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Creating wireframes to illustrate the end-to-end user journey
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Streamlining the booking process and maximising cross-sell opportunities
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Translating complex business rules into simple user experiences
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Creating a comprehensive high-fidelity prototype and testing it on users
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Daily presentations to the core team
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Weekly presentations to senior stakeholders
User journeys
Working from the personas already created by the research team, one of my first tasks was to map out the proposed journey flow for each unique persona and scenario.
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These were then presented back to the project team for approval.
The James family’s ‘Plan & Choose’ journey
Persona card
Wireframes & Prototyping
Being led to some degree by the development partner (IBM) the user scenarios were prioritised and divided up into a series of work streams.
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Each week I would create a clickable prototype demonstrating a particular scenario and present it to the core team and senior stakeholders. Any internal amends, usually driven by IBM, would be made and we move on to discuss the next scenario to be prototyped.
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This steady churn of ‘review and brief’ continued until all scenarios had been prototyped.
Early wireframe
User testing
When all the scenarios had been signed off by the client, I worked with a UI designer to replicate the proposed experience as closely as possible before user testing.
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Key challenges:
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Finding the range of users to test the prototype on
Solution:
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Travel back and forward on a ferry from Dover to Calais, all day, testing as many passengers as possible
The test results were reported back to the team with only minor amendments required.
High-fidelity prototype used for testing onboard
Outcomes
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A final set of annotated wireframes, capturing all interactions and functionality, was delivered to the dev team.
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Within 3 months of launch, the new website was already delivering significant value to P&O with conversion up by over 25% and passengers buying into other revenue streams.
“Their (design team) approach helped us put the customer at the heart of the strategy and deliver a real step change in experience. Since launch, performance and targets are being smashed with conversion up by over 25% and uptake of new revenue propositions exceeding targets set.”
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- Sarah Rosier, Head of Marketing and Sales
Revised site