Enhancing the Customer Shoot Readiness Experience at soona
soona is a dynamic Series B start-up that introduced the world to live virtual e-commerce photo shoots — at scale and on-budget.
soona is young and growing. The customer's experience on their live shoot is critical, and often determined whether or not they returned. But there was a problem: after customers made a booking for a shoot, they often found themselves lost in the labyrinth of shoot preparation steps, not knowing what to do next, and struggling to locate their tasks. These tasks play a vital role in both scheduling the shoot and aligning the customer and photographer with a single creative vision. If there is a disconnect there — photos would not be purchased and the customer may not return.
The Challenge
Improve visibility and understanding of customer actions needed to prepare for their photo shoot, thereby encouraging more customers to complete these tasks.
🙋♀️ My Role
I led and executed design from research and discovery phases through high fidelity visual designs and engineering support. I worked with my PM, 3 engineers and an engineering lead. Our UX researcher conducted the initial generative research.
🚀 outcomes
+24%
increase in shot list completion
+109%
increase in conversion rate: integrated shipping completed on details page
+37%
increase in conversion rate: integrated shipping started --> completed
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data."—🔎 ux researcher Sherlock Holmes
An earlier project generated research insights into this problem. A key customer pain point identified through that work was shoot prep process confusion. Certain customer tasks also had a low completion rate. For instance, the shot list, a critical step in which the customer communicates what needs to be shot, had a completion rate of 37%.
1.
Customers did not know their next steps upon finishing their booking
2.
They need a clearer line of sight into what's expected of them, and what they can expect from soona
3.
Customers need a ‘one-stop-shop’ for shoot information, and don’t like the ‘easter egg hunt’ of tasks
🔥 a spark of an idea
a checklist where customers can easily see and complete their shoot prep tasks.
We generated the idea of a customer shoot prep task ‘checklist’ and kept it on the back-burner. I tested this general concept with a group of customers and it tested well. With my advocacy and data presented, our team found priority for this work a few months after the initial research.
⏱️ constraints
Working closely with my PM and lead engineer partners, we established the MVP scope. The check list tasks would link to existing workflows — the workflows themselves remained unchanged. We had a limited timeframe of 8 weeks for development and 4 weeks for design research, discovery and design.
💡 I had the high-level solution, now I needed
discovery and insights for execution
soona has many intricate operations considerations, as well as processes for different product offerings and scenarios. It's imperative to define what those are before diving in to design, to make sure there isn't a major scenario or process left out.
caption: screenshot of the discovery file I created while designing the shoot readiness project. click to enlarge.
Which users need what tasks? What are the biggest problems?
conduct stakeholder and SME interviews
How does it work now?
complete an audit
Generate ideas and understand common patterns
competitive analysis
Gain insights on user actions
LogRocket user session observation
💡 key takeaways
Enhancing customer understanding of task significance and personalization of tasks leads to higher completion rates, particularly for shot list creation.
New customers faced difficulties locating the booking details page, suggesting a need for improved accessibility.
For operational efficiency, prioritize model selection, shipping, and shot list completion, with an emphasis on using our integrated shipping system.
Utilize an often-visited page that was reachable from the main pages, that matched the mental model for this content: the booking details page
♾️ synergy
Facilitating for broad alignment
Next I conducted a workshop that brought stakeholders together to align on project objectives and identify essential tasks. This collaboration served multiple purposes: it identified any tasks I was missing, and it created broad alignment on the tasks included and the approach I took for the challenge.
Caption: Screenshot showing stakeholder workshop document. Click to enlarge.
Features and Changes Implemented
1. Personalized pre-production customer task checklist (net new feature)
The checklist items are personalized based on the customer's choices during booking.
Checklist provides access to all pre-pro tasks in one place
Included a 'more details' link with explanatory text: including clarity on shipping reference numbers, types of shipping, definition and explanation of a shot list is and why it’s important.
Labeled tasks as 'required for scheduling’ or ‘required for shoot success’ for urgency and transparency
click image to view ln new tab
2. Page layout updates to focus attention on important information
- Removed clutter and repetitive elements and improved hierarchy, making the page distinct from the 'home' dashboard and more clearer overall.
- Added the name of the shoot as a header on the page to help with recognition and way-finding
3. Improved navigation to the list to increase adoption and understanding of the next steps
- Updated post-booking emails with a link directly to the list
- Updated the booking payment confirmation page to redirect users straight to the list so they are familiar with it right after booking
4. Timeline redesign to increase customer awareness of where they are in the process (fast follow)
- Consolidated the timeline steps, reducing steps from 9 to 5, reducing complexity and overwhelm
- Decreased redundancy between checklist and timeline.
Checklist is only for customer actions; the timeline is for surfacing what is happening from soona’s side and process
- Improved mobile-friendliness
- Improved accessibility
- Added shoot date, time, and duration information
- Made the element full width and at the top of the page
