MCBRIDE SISTERS
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.
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.
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.
I was a Lead UX Researcher on the team consisting of 3 people. My main responsibilities included user experience research, as well as final iterations to the prototype.
Contextual Inquiries, User Interviews, Usability Tests, Sketches, Wireframes, Prototyping (Design Tool: Figma), Service Blueprint.
THE RESEARCH PROCESS
01. Contextual Inquiries
We conducted contextual interviews with 5 users who were given 2 tasks on the website: to find and purchase a bottle of wine to their liking, and to become a member of the Wine Club.
The Main Takeaways
- Filters needed to be improved as the users couldn't find the wine they desired
- Wine Club page was text-heavy and important subscription information was not highlighted
02. User Interviews
10 users were interviewed with the goal to provide us with qualitative insights about their habits about wine purchasing and to learn about their experience with the wine club memberships. It was important to understand when and at what circumstances customers purchase wine online and what they enjoy/don't like about wine club subscriptions.
The collected insights were used to develop personas, and understand what information to prioritize when restructuring the Wine Club page.
Another important insight from the conducted research was that the users usually shop for wine at their local wine/liquor stores which pointed our team toward one more design solution - service design.
03. Journey Map
We observed the emotions and behaviors of the users on the website and mapped out in the journey map. This visual helped our team prioritize the efforts needed to address the main pain points and create seamless overall experience for the users as well as increase sales for the company.
04. DEVELOPING PERSONAS
To better understand McBride Sisters’ typical users we developed two personas – Bonnie and Cody. Bonnie is a wine enthusiast who always likes trying new wines, as well as experience of learning about the winery, and what it best pairs with. Cody is a beginner in terms of wine drinking, but his mom who lives in another state loves wine and Cody wants to deliver a bottle to her just because.
Bonnie needs a way to quickly understand how the Wine Club subscription works so that she can make an informed decision about purchasing a subscription.
How might we create a seamless Wine Club experience to keep Bonnie excited and engaged?
Cody needs a better way to find a suitable wine so that he can use his time more efficiently.
How might we improve the search and filtering options? How might we improve the navigation?
05. Analyzing Competition
It was important for us to understand the competitors' strengths and weaknesses in comparison to our client's business, and our team divided effort and analyzed 5 direct and indirect competitors. The SWOT analysis gave us a better understanding of how to approach the redesign in the most efficient way by adopting better practices from the competitors, what features to prioritize, and what opportunities to take in order to stand out in the market.
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 it was cheaper to become a member. McBride Sisters stood out because of their beautiful personal story of the brand, large following on social media, and highly-rated wines.
THE DESIGN PROCESS
06. SKETCHES
When we felt that we had enough research findings to back up or design decisions, we started with sketching out the pages that needed to be improved. We wanted to make sure that our design decisions were cohesive and could be iterated upon quickly.
07. Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability testing
We tested our first high-fidelity prototype on 5 users and noticed that all tasks were completed successfully and relatively quickly. However, some steps took longer than expected and users needed additional guidance.
Again, we made necessary improvements, and tested out final interactive prototype with 5 users. The average time spent on completing the tasks reduced significantly.
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.
