Niva LaRue

Inspiring People tO PERSONALIZE THEIR SKINCARE

Industry: Skincare, E-Commerce, Subscription
Project Type: Website (specifically home page and quiz flow)
Business: Proven

This startup out of Y-Combinator personalizes skincare products based upon a consumer skin concerns and goals. Using AI to analyze millions of skincare product reviews, this startup finds which products and their ingredients work best for certain skin types. This is a subscription business isn’t interested in that cookie cutter skincare business.

How do we get users to interact with this new brand?

What is the unique, defining factor that makes it stand out from the sea of skincare companies?

RESEARCH

How are the users feeling?

"I realized I should have more control over how I treat my skin."

Consumers are drowned in skincare products currently on the market and don't know which one would work best for their skin concerns.

So they turn to online reviews or friend recommendations, but consumers do not realize that skin types are unique to each person and those reviews or recommendations may not hold across a variety of skin types.

Problem

Users are very influenced by reviewers, but not all reviewers are their same skin type. They’re frustrated with getting top rated, expensive skincare that only works okay.

Even through my user interviews, I can see the different, defined consumer skin goals and concerns. Consumers are so tired of trying new products, spending so much money, and seeing no results.

What are some issues with the current home page? I like focusing on low hanging iterations that can really enhance the user experience.

EVALUATING THE HOME PAGE

A 5 second test is used to evaluate how much a user can decipher from a particular site page within 5 seconds. I chose: home page.
N = 34

This is crucial in the ecommerce world since Google Adwords and Facebook ads LAND on your home page, so you want to make sure users understand what makes your skincare special.

EVALUATING THE QUIZ QUESTIONS

I wanted to test how quickly users can read and digest the quiz questions. Each question should not take the user 100 years to read and answer or it will be an exhausting experience.

I evaluated the first question of the quiz: What are the issues you most want your skincare to address? N = 20

How are the stakeholders feeling?

Proven did not know the best practices for quiz-based subscription models. Their formulas are backed by science, and they did not know how best to communicate this to the public.

They wanted the brand to feel fresh and effective, but not nerdy and strange.

IDEATION

I designed the home and personalized quiz flow with a sense of uniqueness for each user. I wanted the users to feel welcomed and delighted by this new, fresh brand.

What’s the goal here?

While the stakeholder goal was to increase subscription orders, I focused on the user goal of finding effective skincare products that are actually formulated for his or her skin type. I ideated based upon comparative analysis and user interviews for an easy, informative home page and personalized quiz. And I redesigned the site map to articulate the major user flow.

Comparative Analysis: Native, Care Of, Stitch Fix

Users should feel informed and delighted!

Major Iterations

1. Update the primary navigation, hero image, and CTA copy
2. Creatively developed three product pro's to showcase on the home page alongside corresponding icons
3. Design to showcase product reviews closer to the top of the home page
4. Redesigned the personalized quiz to have more questions, but easier auto-advance answers and less wordy
5. Redesigned the Results page to present the four skincare products and their purpose clearly while enticing the consumer to checkout to receive a full skincare report
6. Redesigned the Results page to have the results, checkout, and confirmation vertically on one page
7. Added options to choose a sample or subscription for the consumer, adding a "most popular" to the subscription choice
8. Showcased more product photos from user requests
9. Had one primary CTA for the home page.

How dOES THE NEW HOME PAGE hold up?

I had previously conducted a 5 second test on the original home page, so it’s imperative to conduct the same 5 second test on the new design to validate it. N = 25

The home page is the first impression. Secondly is actually getting the user to engage with this brand: entering and answering the skincare quiz.

Based upon user feedback, the quiz is long and some of the questions were a bit confusing. It seemed “never-ending". So let’s try to make this quiz more delightful!

How DOES THE NEW QUIZ LAYOUT hold up?

This quiz is supposed to capture leads, not bore users. We need to keep it short, quick, interactive, and easy to understand. I conducted another 5 second test because this quiz should be 1) quick and 2) easy to read. N = 20

It was great to validate the design: people were fully understanding the question and even reading a few of the answers within 5 seconds.

conversion rates also add to the validation of a design

There was one particular feature I was grappling with. Where do we input the Name and Email Address forms within the quiz? Some users suggested in the beginning, that way they get instant gratification when they finish the quiz. This is good if you’re only focused on highest intent customers. When it comes to ecommerce, you want to capture as many user emails (interested parties) as possible (for ads, targeting, etc.)

Another thought would be to put Name and Email Address at the end. Have the user go through the entire quiz and then “ugh” have to input their name and email to get those results. It is good since the user is already very invested, but it’s important to track those churn rates.

I recommend A/B testing out this feature immensely.

Results + reflections

I had minimal user testing and feedback to my designs, in my opinion, due to lack of time. Looking back, I would have preferred more time to test my designs to find any confusion, error, or pain points. 

Next steps that had come to mind is build out a review page on the site. Associate reviews with certain skin types so that once people go through the quiz and create an account with Proven, they can actually filter the reviews of verified customers with similar skin type!

Once you start collecting conversion rates on existing flows, you can always iterate to better the flows. Many stakeholders I’ve worked with tinker forever on designs, and my recommendation is to push out a researched design and start getting real, quality feedback from actual customers.