Laird Plastics
Industry: Manufacturing and Distributing
Annual Revenue: $500 million+
My Role: User Experience & Development Lead
Team Size: Four -- Me plus three researchers
Length of Project: 6 months (ongoing)
John James
UX/UI Designer
Industry: Manufacturing and Distributing
Annual Revenue: $500 million+
My Role: User Experience & Development Lead
Team Size: Four -- Me plus three researchers
Length of Project: 6 months (ongoing)
The content on the old Laird site was hard to find, and when you found it, the layout was difficult to read. The design was unappealing and the overall usability was poor. My goal was to modernize the site by using modern and user-first design principles, increase usability by getting user feedback throughout the creation process, establish a convenient user flow, that resulted in high-margin saleswhile also generating more business leads for the salespeople on the ground.
The new product page is easy to navigate which has increased usability and benefitted the overall user experience. Plus, the Add to Cart button is bright green, which makes the user more likely interact with it.
We intentionally kept the Request Quote form short to increase response rate. It now generates hundreds of leads each month.
Laird plastics has a massive selection of plastic materials. Literally thousands of them. Typically, an integration partner can connect all of these products into a system like BigCommerce, eliminating the need for manual product entry. Our leadership team didn't make the investment for the integration partner, so we had to manually enter the most popular products that were likely to sell online while also creating an avenue for people to request a custom quote. We also didn't want to confuse past users too much, so we kept the content basically the same, but increased the functionality dramatically.
I served as the UX Lead on this project, but I was also responsible for developing the site. I worked with two researchers who provided valuable insight that I used to create the final design. We went with the BigCommerce sales platform, which is known for its ecommerce capabilities, and not its design capabilities. We had to work with an existing theme, and were not able to make all of the design changes that we wanted to make. We wanted the site to be scalable, but eventually encourage our leadership team to invest with a 3rd party integration partner to give us more design flexibility with the site.
BigCommerce had its limitations, but one of its benefits was its built in search capabilities. I custom coded this section to show the image and the item name clearly to facilitate the search process.
Typically plastic sites are "information-only" sites, so having the ability to truly shop around sets Laird apart. About 66% of users are coming for informational purposes or to request a quote, but the other 33% are actively shopping for products.
We created a modern, user-friendly site to serve as Laird's first true ecommerce site. In addition to improving the brand's digital image and generating hundreds of high-quality leads each month in most cases, we also generated over $10,000 in online sales in the opening weeks with barely any marketing budget. The majority of the impact from this site is seen at our regional Laird locations, where we distribute leads the come in from the site. Many of these customers have monthly, or annual plastic needs, so from our intentionally designed 'contact us' page, lifelong customers are likely to be gained.
We started off with interviews of executives and users, gathering as much information as we possibly could to build a mockup. We also reviewed quantitative analytic data to inform our design decisions, like what brands we wanted to feature and which products needed to be highlighted. I then created a series of mockups and prototypes in Adobe XD to show to executives and users, which segued into usability testing and more interviews based on what I created. After collecting all of the information, I designed a final site and have continued to improve the site based on user feedback and quantitative analytic data.
The initial prototype (built in Adobe XD) I used for user testing...many changes since then!
This site has proven to the company that a website it more than just a website. It's like an online sales person, gathering leads, collecting data, promoting products and selling inventory internationally at all times. Since the launch of this site, leadership has expressed more interest in investing in an implementation partner which would connect our backend inventory system to the BigCommerce frontend, simplifying the process for both the sales centers and users, by providing accurate inventory availability and shipping prices.