Improving IKEA's Online Shopping Experience for College Students
A research-driven approach to create a seamless online shopping experience for young, budget-conscious, and style-oriented customers.
Executive Summary
Our research focused on enhancing the online purchasing experience for college students shopping on IKEA’s website to furnish their living spaces. 12 students participated in in-depth interviews to uncover motivations, pain points, and decision-making patterns. The study highlighted both strengths and weaknesses in IKEA’s online platform and provided actionable recommendations for improvement.
Key Findings:
Strengths: Large product selection, detailed descriptions, efficient filtering, and user-friendly navigation.
Weaknesses: Lack of inspiration-focused content, overwhelming choices, and issues with browsing categories.
Recommendations: Enhanced product visualization, expanded filtering options, and improved post-purchase support.
Role: UX Researcher
Tools: Teams, Figma, Audio Recordings, Note-Taking
Duration: October 2024 – November 2024
Goals and Objectives
Understand user motivations: Explore the goals and priorities of young people when shopping for furniture and home decor on the IKEA website.
Identify pain points: Discover the specific challenges and frustrations users encounter during the shopping process, such as navigating the website, selecting products, and making decisions.
Analyze decision-making processes: Observe how users evaluate different product options and make choices, considering factors like size, colour, style, and functionality.
Evaluate the website's effectiveness: Assess its current features and design in terms of their ability to support users' needs and facilitate decision-making.
Identify opportunities for improvement: Propose recommendations for enhancing the website's usability, functionality, and overall user experience to address the identified challenges and improve decision-making.
SWOT Analysis
Problem Statement
Methodology
User Persona
Moodboarding
Personalized Creation: Add furniture and decor from Ideas & Inspiration or product categories to a customizable mood-board, organized by themes or rooms.
AR Integration: Export mood-boards to Ikea's AR feature to visualize items in real-time within a scanned or existing space.
Seamless Shopping: Access product links directly from mood-boards for easy purchasing and sync mood-boards across devices via the IKEA account.
Collaborative Design: Share mood-boards with others for feedback and refine layouts with interactive AR tools.
The Challenge:
IKEA’s website overwhelms young shoppers with an extensive product catalog and limited tools for inspiration and visualization, making it difficult for them to browse and make confident purchase decisions.
Hypothesis:
Efficient navigation, inspiration-driven content, and better visualization tools will improve decision-making and engagement on the platform.
The research was qualitative and primary, utilizing in-depth interviews to understand the students’ experiences with IKEA’s website. The process was structured as follows:
Target Audience: College students looking to furnish their apartments.
Research Method: Semi-structured online interviews via Teams.
Data Collection: Audio recordings and note-taking.
Limitations in Product Visualization
Users struggle to visualize how IKEA products will fit in their space.
The website offers limited visual aids, making it harder to imagine style.
The ideas and inspiration category seems like a blog and does not offer suggestions.
Thematic Filters and Categorization
Seasonal Themes: Introduce seasonal collections (e.g., Winter, Spring) as filters and categories to help users explore products curated for specific occasions or styles.
Priority Display: Products from active seasonal themes are showcased at the top of product listings, ensuring they are easily discoverable.
Enhanced Filtering: Allow users to filter by themes alongside standard filters like price, size, and color, creating a tailored browsing experience.
Dynamic Updates: Refresh themes regularly to reflect current trends, holidays, or seasonal events, keeping the shopping experience fresh and relevant.
Timeline: 5 weeks
Team Size: 5 members
Target Audience: College students furnishing apartments
Methods Used: Semi-structured interviews, affinity mapping, personas, journey mapping
User Journey Map
Key Insights
Key Insights
Challenges with Categorization
Ikea's unique product names and limited categorization options make it challenging for users to find products that align with their personal decor styles.
Users spend more time searching and feel less confident in their choices, which could impact conversion rates and overall user satisfaction.
Limited Filtering Options
Users feel overwhelmed when narrowing down products due to insufficient filtering options on Ikea's website.
Although filters are available for basics like price and colour, they don’t extend to specific decor styles, which frustrates users when searching for precise themes or styles.
Recommendations
Conclusion
This research identified key usability issues on IKEA’s website that hindered the online shopping experience for college students. By introducing features like AR for visualization, improved categorization, and post-purchase support, IKEA can create a more efficient and engaging shopping journey for this target audience, ultimately increasing conversion rates and customer loyalty.