Motivating users to buy sustainable products on e-commerce platform

The inspiration to start this project came from a YouTube video by Business Insider.

I learned about this amazing startup called Phool. PHOOL is an environment-conscious startup trying to reduce temple waste by converting sacred temple flowers into incense sticks, which again can be used in temples.

I started researching the company and learned they were selling majorly on their website and on some e-commerce platforms. I realized that sustainable products like PHOOL on e-commerce platforms are hidden gems and were not easy to find on e-commerce platforms. Moreover, there was no dedicated category for sustainable products to make them accessible on the e-commerce platform.

“There are so many small-scale businesses in India that are working on Eco-Friendly products but do not get into the limelight that they deserve.”

Research

I did some secondary research to understand the sustainable markets and acceptance of sustainable products in the Indian market. I found a study which included about 2,000 respondents between the ages of 25 to 65, from five cities — Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, and Kolkata. It was found that:

User Interview

I conducted user interviews with 4 people who are active amazon users. There were some pain points:

Distinct identity design for the Eco- friendly products on the platform

• There was a lack of knowledge about sustainable products in the market which makes them difficult to find in the market.

• Users were concerned about the pricing of sustainable products and find it difficult to adopt into daily life due to significant price differences when compared with other competitors.

💡In this case study, all the users were Amazon Shoppers, I will be using Amazon as the e-commerce platform. Moreover, Amazon is a good fit due to its largest potential customer base. Amazon is the largest e-commerce retailer in India with over 322.54 million users on its platform in India.

If we take a quick look at the current amazon shopping experience we some problems:

Defining the Problem and Scope

Based on the research I decided to solve the main problems that the user faces:

Q. How can I make Eco-friendly products more accessible to the users of the app?

Q. How can I motivate users to buy eco-friendly products every time they shop online?

In order to solve these problems I listed down what I needed to create

• Distinct identity design for the Eco- friendly products on the platform

• A gamified experience to incentivize the user to buy an eco-friendly product

• Making eco-friendly alternatives more accessible in the categories search

Based on my user research I created my main persona:

Once defining the problem statement I was ready to design a user journey map of the persona to observe the journey and look out for pain points of the user.

In this case, Aditya is looking to buy a good quality incense stick for an upcoming festival. While searching, he discovers about the eco-friendly promotion initiative by Amazon, where on buying a sustainable product, amazon incentivizes with coins which can be used for future purchases.

The incentivization in the program is through Amazon green coins which the user is rewarded for buying a sustainable product. The amazon green coins can further be traded for coupons (cashback, a month of prime subscription etc.), the user gets a surprise gift coupon on hitting a coin milestone. The success of hitting the milestone can further be shared by the user's social media platform.

While gamifying the rewarding the section of the program. I followed the Octalysis Framework by Yu-kai Chou.

Using each section of the user journey map as a reference to what is needed to be designed, I was able to define the following design tasks:

The section on the home page of the Amazon app will draw the attention of the user towards the program

• Designing the 'How it works' page for the user to learn about the program

• Designing the sections like receiving the coins, storing the coins, hitting the milestones

• Designing the green store where coupons can be redeemed by trading coins

After defining the design tasks I was ready to design some user flows that would depict the following scenarios:

Scenario 1: Aditya is looking to buy a good quality incense stick for an upcoming festival. While searching, he discovers the eco-friendly promotion initiative by Amazon.

Scenario 2: In this scenario, Aditya has received the delivery. He receives a notification from the app to redeem his green coins. He then trades these coins with cashback coupons from the green store to use in his future purchases.

Ideating

Once the user flows were defined, I started ideating differing ideas to illustrate the optimal solutions for the problem. Following are some of the main sections of the design.

1. Home Screen: In this section, I plan to put an eco-friendly section in the quick access bar in the Amazon app.

2. Categories Section: In this section again, I plan to add a section dedicated to sustainable products. In this section, users can find a wide variety of sustainable products

3. Search page: In this section, a green tag on sustainable products will help users to identify sustainable products from the list of searched products.

4. Product Page: This page will illustrate to the users about product information, redeemed coins. Also, the users will be able to learn more about the program.

5. How it works Page: This section will educate the users about the program and how buying sustainable products can let them earn coins, which can later be used to redeem coupons.

6. Coupons section: This section illustrates the coins earned, coupons redeemed, a milestone progress bar. It also contains the green store, i.e. the coupon store, where users can trade coins to different coupons.

Prototype & Test

After completing the wireframes, I started building high fidelity designs signifying the above mention user flows. The aim of designing the high fidelity designs was to build a simple yet intuitive seamless flow that would help the user to achieve the above tasks.

After the completion of the high-fidelity design, I created working prototypes for the same. I conducted an unmoderated test for my users. This would enable me to test the features and the gamification flow, that I have designed.

Usability Test

Test objective:

• Determine the overall ease of use and flow of the feature, areas of hesitation, confusion, or frustration for users

• Determine whether users are able to discover about the program

• Determine if the users can redeem their coins and trade them for coupons successfully

The usability test was conducted with the users with the two following scenarios:

Scenario 1: Imagine you are looking for an incense stick on Amazon and you discover about the green program and would like to buy one. How would you achieve that?

Scenario 2: Imagine you purchased one of the eco-friendly products from Amazon. Now you receive a notification about your coins to be redeemed. How would you redeem your coins and trade for coupons?

Some Key insights

• Changing the word from 'sustainable' to 'eco-friendly'. 2/3 of the users were not confident about the meaning the of word 'sustainable'

• 'Go to green store' button was less accessible, increase in contrast helped in the improving accessibility

• Users felt very happy after receiving coins and were keen to buy a more eco-friendly product

Final Design

After analyzing the results from the usability test, I made the changes as discussed above and here is the final prototype:

Scenario 1: Prototype Link

Scenario 2: Prototype Link

Reflections

This was one of the most challenging exercises I have ever worked on. But it was a super fun exercise. This exercise helped me grow as a designer and solve real-world problems.

Thought-out the design process there are certain things I would like to work on in future.

One of the things I did not work upon was a corner case of how to manage the coins if the product is returned.

While designing, It was kept in mind that I do not disrupt the existing visual language of Amazon, and the program was part of the amazon shopping experience.

Seems like you have made this far. Thank you for devoting your precious time to reading my case study. If you want to connect you can hit me up on my LinkedIn, Instagram