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Grand Union

Boots

Boots.com user experience design and development

Designing the user experience for Boots.com.

Boots business model has always been built around high footfall in its 2,500 High Street stores in the UK. Whilst achieving healthy returns, its online presence was built on a 6 year old platform which was neither scalable nor future-proofed.

The business problem

Boots were being out-performed by their online competitors by every measure - user experience, sales volumes, range, site performance. To ensure that Boots maintain its position as sector leader and fulfil its ambition to be the world's leading multi channel health and beauty provider Boots would have to re-shape its entire online operation. Technology partners were abundant, but Boots needed a partner who knew digital and consumer behaviour, who could act as a strategic partner whilst working at the level of detail required to design and specify a compelling and persuasive on-line shopping experience. Boots engaged Grand Union as a strategic partner to guide the project and shape the online experience.

The process

Our first task was to demonstrate and substantiate the importance of the digital channel to the board. The development of a robust business case helped secure investment for the enterprise platform and forced sceptics to see digital as a core component to the Boots business. The size of the project, the complexity of the business and the volume of stakeholders meant that different work streams would have to work independently against an agreed set of principles. Once in place, our engagement spread across five core activities that would underpin and shape the online Boots experience.

The product

Requirements: building consumer and business insight When working on large scale e-commerce technology projects it's crucial that consumer requirements are not eclipsed by those of the business. We gathered consumer requirements using a combination of qualitative market research, in-depth interviews and focus groups and quantitative site stats analysis. Working with Bootsí technology partner, we gathered, refined, categorised and signed-off 950 business requirements from the entire Boots operation. Customer experience strategy - the foundation of the online experience Before engaging with the low level design of the online experience it's important to define a solid foundation from which to work. Drawing on our knowledge acquired from the requirements gathering, we defined the underlying principals of the online experience; who would be using the site, what they wanted to achieve and how they go about achieving them. Designing the experience: user experience design and information architecture To specify the online experience we designed 1200 wireframes that met the needs of five personas and their models of behaviour. The cataloguing system was re-modelled using the results of card sorting and a technique where actual users co-design the system with designers A macro programme plan Once the strategy had been derived and shared with stakeholders we worked closely with the core Boots.com team and other external stakeholder to gather key input deliverables for the 7 different work streams of the programme and develop a macro programme plan. Web-design and branding guidelines As the programme developed we created numerous documents for all-stakeholder distribution. Three documents stand out: web design-guidelines; the design files required for the online experience. Every module, widget, icon, branding guidelines and the underlying principles that informed the design, wireframe encylopedia and complete reference document containing all 1200 wireframes and associated specifications.

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Our work

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Boots in numbers

950 Business requirements from the entire Boots operation

1200 Wireframes designed