Jewson website
Jewson the largest builders merchants in the UK with 600 branches, it supplies building materials, tools and services to trade professionals and DIY customers. I joined to build a design function as part of a huge digital transformation programme which included building a new website and apps on a new e-commerce platform.
Role: Design Director Sector: Building Distribution Date: Launched 2020
Brief
I joined Saint-Gobain in December 2018 to lead the Design and research on it's major digital transformation programme across it's 24 UK Brands. The key project was moving the Jewson.co.uk website off a legacy brochureware site onto a new e-commerce platform SAP Hybris Cloud.
Why a new website?
The reasons for this were:
• The current website had no e-commerce functionality and did not display product price or stock availability
• Dated look and feel
• Required increased security to meet the requirements of the SAP Hybris cloud
• Costly with 3rd parties support on current platform
The key issues were:
• Difficult to estimate tech resource to move to SAP Hybris Cloud
• External engineering team working on the project and difficult to estimate the technical implementation
• Little research done on trade customer needs and segments
• Communicating to customers the requirement to re-register to create more secure passwords
My Role & Team
The Jewson E-commerce project was my key focus from Dec 2018, through to launch in April 2020. I was the responsible for running the design delivery throughout the project where I managed the UX, UI and Research resource and reviewed all stages of the project including running workshops and some of the customer focus groups. I recruited a small inhouse design team of 2 UX designers, 1 UI designer and a User Researcher, working closely with Product, Operations, Legal and Brand teams and the external engineering team. with the Product Director I gave regular updates and presentations to the Senior leadership team and I presented the new look across the business.
Research
As there was little behavioural research into the building customer base and behaviours I started with two workstreams:
Workshops with the business and research with customers.
1. Workshops - Working with the user researcher and marketing insights team we constructed workshops across the Jewson business to identify what the Business needs are in the key customer journey's covering the areas of: view product, availability and pricing, checkout, registration, account management, customer support, content and search.
Blueprint map showing high level business needs and customer touchpoints
2. Customer research - Through telephone interviews, focus groups and surveys we developed customer segments around the small to mid-size builder, the customer group the site is aimed at rather than medium and large scale builders that often have account managers who they usually deal direct with to order.
The small builder is typically a white van man, running their own business either on their own or with a small crew who are brought in as contractors as required. Mainly do renovations / extensions rather than new developments. They are a significant ethnic mix. Difficult to connect with. 90% of their spend with Jewson is in cash or on card. Many rely on admin support from a family member often a wife or partner. From this research we developed 4 personas to work with.
Persona's
User Testing
We developed desktop and mobile prototypes for user testing and ran 4 different user testing sessions over 6 months with a variety of existing and non-customers recruiting for the 4 persona groups covering Registration, Onboarding, Browse, Checkout and Account Management journeys.
New website launched
April 2020 The new Jewson.co.uk e-commerce website launched at a critical time to Jewson with the Coronavirus lockdown closing most stores, it meant ordering online for delivery or collection was vital to continuing trading and for the construction trades to continue to work. Also many people took on DIY projects at home whilst they were furloughed from work in 2020.
The new site with fully functional e-commerce and updated look
Results
29,300 customers signed up in the first week and in June 2020 the first month of full online trading took over one million in sales. The site now takes over 2 million a month in sales.
March 2023: There was a redesign of the site with a white header and sentence case categories.
In an AB test Dec 22 - Jan 23 the new header resulted in 3% more searches, 8% more product views and 21% products added to basket and 7% extra orders generated. Overall the new header has increased revenue by £13k over the test period.
The redesigned site with white header and a lighter look
