Ben Lido Travel Supply Co: Custom Travel Kits

December 2017-today

Launching February of 2019, Ben Lido is an e-commerce platform aiming to disrupt the CPG space, specifically travel-sized health & beauty products. Their focus: offering TSA-approved travel sizes of many products and categories. The Ben Lido platform allows you to choose your bag, and all the products that you want in your bag - delivered to your door, as often as you like (reorder or subscription-based).

** To comply with my confidentiality agreement, I have omitted certain information. Check back after launch! **

My Role:

I am responsible for the experience strategy and design of the new web platform. I participate in website design, conduct internal quality testing, and usability testing with potential users. I work alongside senior developers, programmers, brand and creative teams.

Goals:

Streamline the building of kits and the checkout process on the website, improving efficiency and usability along the way.

The Challenge:

Simplify a complex process for rapid commerce.

I was approached with two primary objectives — first, ensure the website was efficient, able to convert users into customers. Second, to test functionality and usability as people interacted with the environment. I was under pressure to move fast, since the beta-launch was several months after the initial engagement. That required decisions that would affect design and development, making sure the programmers understood the “needs” of the UX team.

Focusing on Acquisition:

Although our brief was to develop optimal functionality, I stressed that engaging in a series of user testing sessions would uncover potentially major oversights, assumptions, and areas for improvement. After all, the CPG space is an environment where a single added click could result in shopping cart abandonment, and loss of a potential customer. Since Ben Lido had a large budget for marketing, it was critical that we converted quality “leads” into sales.

Process:

Unfortunately, as with many startups, it is hard to maintain an agile work environment due to the numerous hiccups a new business faces along the way. Due to constraints in location, what ended up working best was a triangular communication between UX, developers, and stakeholders. This created alignment across all stakeholders and sparked several improvements.

Alignment:

Meeting with key stakeholders helped us to understand their business challenges. Together, we identified risks and aligned on expectations for the platform, before launch.

Personas:

We knew our main customer would be travelers, both leisure and business. Our research also revealed that heavy travelers were often given their travel supplies by the leader of the household, usually the mom. We found and prioritized 3 key persona types and aligned this with our marketing strategy. We used these personas constantly throughout development to guide design decisions and future build priorities. They are: Moms (head of households), Business Travelers (non-gender specific), and Leisure Travelers (non-gender specific).

Storytelling About Ideal Experiences:

Knowing exactly who I was designing for allowed me to ask how Ben Lido fits into the lives of the user. We created 5 commonalities for kits we are able to sell on Amazon: The Adventure for off the grid; the Business for business people; the Beach for vacationers; the Luxury for those who wanted high end luxury product; and The Essentials for quick grab-and-go basics. Since the degree of customization required is not possible on Amazon, we had to provide expertly curated travel kits that were prepackaged to be sold with a set list of products, curated by several interviews with members of each persona group.

Testing With Users:

We use usertesting.com to conduct our usability tests. It is my responsibility to help define task scenarios, and establish objectives and success parameters to evaluate the website's performance. We opted to use a real build of the website. 

After our first round of testing, we found several ways to improve the website, as many users could not complete the tasks efficiently.

Putting Findings Into Practice:

Some of the key features which needed to be integrated included:

  • Shopping cart functionality, allowing multiple kits to be purchased in one order

  • A complete reconfiguration of the navigation, allowing users to find more relevant products quicker

  • The ability to create a kit from scratch, allowing users direct access to products in a logical, easy-to-access format

  • Customization of curated travel packs, streamlining the shopping process

  • Changing the “subscription-based” model to a more accessible “on-demand” reorder

  • More modern, vibrant color palette and imagery site-wide