MCBRIDE SISTERS | CASE STUDY
Story
Robin and Andréa McBride founded McBride Sisters —the largest female, Black-owned wine company in the US. The Black Girl Magic collection—Robin and Andrea’s personal ode to their culture and story—is inspired by the magic and resilience of Black women. Their company is headquartered in Oakland, California.
Problem
McBride sisters need to connect to new customers seeking new wines using the online eCommerce model, and delivering excellent customer experience without sacrificing personalization, delight, and taste.
Goals
Improve existing global navigation, revisit filtering options in the online store page, reorganize information on the wine club page in order to make important details more visible so that customers could make educated decisions about the club subscription.
My Role on the Team
Our team consisting of 3 people, completed this project within 3 weeks as a part of our student portfolio. My main responsibilities were user research and final iterations to the prototype.
Key Methods: Contextual Inquiries, User Interviews, Usability Tests, Sketches, Wireframes, Prototyping, Service Blueprint.
The Research Process
Contextual Inquiries and User Interviews
We followed the Double Diamond design process and started out journey with 5 contextual inquiries and 5 user interviews. All the insights were put on digital sticky notes using FigJam, and then grouped into an affinity map which helped us see the most common pain points and establish trends.
These are the main takeaways:
- the filters need to be completely redesigned as people couldn’t find the wine they wanted
- most users purchase wine locally
- wine enthusiasts love discovering new wines and learning more about wine-related things
- the Wine Club page is a bit text-heavy and disorganized
Journey Map
We mapped out the emotions of our users on the journey map. Website visitors got overwhelmed by a lot of information on the Wine Club page and couldn’t find the most important details about the subscription, and they were not able to use the existing filters intuitively when they were given a task to purchase a bottle of wine.
Developing Personas
To better understand McBride Sisters’ typical users we developed two personas – Bonnie and Cody. Bonnie is a wine enthusiast and Cody is a beginner in terms of wine drinking.
Problem Statement 1 & How Might We
Bonnie needs a way to quickly understand how the wine club works so that she can make an informed decision about purchasing a subscription.
HMW create a seamless wine Club experience to keep Bonnie excited and engaged?
Problem Statement 2 & How Might We’s
Cody needs a better way to find a suitable wine so that he can use his time more efficiently.
HMW we improve the search and filtering options? HMW improve the navigation?
User Flows
These interactions are showcased in user flow maps:
Competitive and Comparative Analysis
After analyzing feedback from the users and determining areas for improvement, we moved to CC and SWOT analysis to discover how direct and indirect competitors solve similar problems.
We discovered that the competition has a higher chances in making online sales via their online stores as their filtering/sorting options were more intuitive. Wine Clubs Subscriptions were better worded and also cheaper to become a member. McBride Sisters stood out because of their beautiful personal story of the brand, large following on social media, and high wine ratings.
The Design Process
Sketches
When we felt that we had enough research findings to back up or design solutions, we started with sketching out the main pages that needed to be improved. We wanted to make sure that our design decisions were cohesive and could be iterated upon quickly.
High Fidelity Wireframing, Prototyping, and Usability Testing
Because if tight timeframe our team skipped the mid-fidelity wireframes stage. We tested our first high-fidelity prototype on five users and noticed that all tasks were completed successfully and relatively quickly. However, some steps took longer than expected and users needed additional guidance.
Iterations
These observations led us to more iterations. We renamed the FIND OUR WINES menu item to OUR RETAILERS; We improved filters by adding another sub category.
Final Wireframes & Prototyping
We once again created an interactive prototype using our iterated wireframes and tested it on 5 users. The average time spent on completing the tasks reduced significantly.
Future User Journey & Conclusion
Now Bonnie can easily find all the details about the wine club, and make informed decisions before subscribing. Cody can find what he needs much faster as the filters have been improved.
Other Solutions
Pop Up Shop
One of the biggest takeaways from the research is that most people like to shop locally to find their wine. McBride sisters do not have a local shop and their vineyard isn’t open to the public. To solve this problem, we proposed a pop-up shop in cities that would have the highest conversions of sales and subscriptions based upon market research.
This is the vision board for the pop-up events, it will offer an interactive wine purchasing experience, classes that include wine and food. McBride certification being the focal point which is free to attend.
Service Blueprint
Since we don’t have access to McBride Sisters’ business goals, we made assumptions that the customer satisfaction and engagement with the brand are of paramount importance. For better understanding the company’s services and the underlying resources and processes we created the service blueprint.
One last thing that we decided to include to the case study was a card/booklet that could be added to the Wine Club Subscription Box. A lot of interviewees pointed out that they enjoy learning about the wine or other wine related How-To things. This solution will add to the engagement with the brand and increase customer satisfaction.
