Shop Front Updates - Concept Testing Brief Overview

[Mario]

Hi all, please find below the brief for concept testing activities with a focus on the front shop updates that we are planning to develop in the next few months.

I have prepared a video introduction that provides a bit of extra context, especially if you are keen to run some video calls or interviews with hub managers and producers to gather feedback.

This structure is still very flexible, and I will work individually with each instance manager that has reached out to participate, so that what we share with participant is tailored to them.

Feel free to ask questions and share your view (also on the prototypes themselves!) here, or in the slack channel.

Thank you!

Main objective

increase confidence to move to delivery for

Shopfront

• shop categories navigation

• grid view + product details

• checkout process

Backoffice

• image management

• cart reminders

Shop navigation concept testing

Goal

Understand if a front shop treatment is sufficient (splitting categories and product properties into 2 separate sections), or if admins want more functionality in the back office. For example:

• allowing to filter by producer

• creating your own categories/product properties

• creating sub-categories/groupings

Prototype > LAUNCH IN BROWSER

Interactions

1. Filter by Vegetables category

2. Click on Filters

3. Close Filters

Questions for participants

Note: if their shop is public, let them walk you through that so that they can provide and show more details.

1. How do you currently categorise your products?

2. Do you use product properties?

3. Do you have any feedback for us on product categorisation and grouping for your shop?

4. show concept and let them talk through it

Grid view concept testing

Goal

Level of interest in

• displaying shop in a grid view

• displaying variants as tiles is relevant or not

• what information to display for each product tile

Prototype (includes product details) >LAUNCH IN BROWSER

Interactions

1. Select order cycle

2. Click on Select for potatoes

3. Go to Potatoes details

4. Go back to shop using the breadcrumb nav (above the product name)

5. Go to veggie box details

6. Go back to shop using the breadcrumb nav (above the product name)

Questions for participants

Note: if their shop is public, let them walk you through that so that they can provide and show more details.

1. Have you had any feedback from your customers regarding how products are displayed in your shop?

2. Do you have any feedback for us on how products are displayed in the shop?

3. show concept and let them talk through it

4. Would you expect the same information to be available in both grid and list view?

5. Are you interested in showing your products even if you don’t have any active order cycles?

6. For products with multiple variants, would you expect each variant to have its own square, image and detail page, or variants to be bundled under a single square and detail page? (draft question - needs a bit of massaging

Product details concept testing

Goals

Level of interest in

• having a dedicated product page

• what would be their use cases for linking to a specific product

• expectations around a product page being public or not when an order cycle is closed

Prototype (includes grid view) >LAUNCH IN BROWSER

Interactions

1. Select order cycle

2. Click on Select for potatoes

3. Go to Potatoes details

4. Go back to shop using the breadcrumb nav (above the product name)

5. Go to veggie box details

6. Go back to shop using the breadcrumb nav (above the product name)

Questions for participants

Note: if their shop is public, let them walk you through their product details that so that they can provide and show more.

1. Do you promote your products individually? If yes, how?

2. Do you have any feedback for us on how product details are currently displayed in the shop?

3. show concept and let them talk through it

4. If your order cycles were closed, would you still want to show this product page to your customers?

Image management concept testing

Goals

Level of interest in

• having multiple images per product

• having images linked to specific variants

• level of customisation

Preference between a centralised place for managing images versus individual upload per variant (see prototypes for details).

Front shop prototype > LAUNCH IN BROWSER

Interactions

1. Move between images by clicking on the image thumbnails

Back office prototype #1 > LAUNCH IN BROWSER

Interactions

1. Click on the image placeholder for the Potatoes variant

2. Click on Upload photo

3. Click on the file manager

4. See updated list

5. Click on new uploaded image

Back office prototype #2 > LAUNCH IN BROWSER

Interactions

1. Click on the image placeholder for the Eggs product

2. Click on Upload image

3. Click on the file manager

4. Click on plus icon to add a second image

5. Click on the file manager

6. Close

7. See updated list

8. Click on new uploaded images

Questions for participants

1. Can you please tell me what you do when you want to add an image to a product you sell?

2. Do you have any feedback for us on how images currently work?

3. (if they mention having multiple images) are you interested in adding more images to your product, or to specific variants, or both?

4. show front shop concept and let them talk through it.

5. show first back office concept and let them talk through it. show second back office concept and let them talk through it

Checkout process insights gathering

Goals

Getting more info on potential customers’ issues during checkout

Questions for participants

1. Have you received any feedback on the checkout process from your customers recently?

2. Do you have any feedback on checkout for us?

Cart reminders insights gathering

Goals

Level of interest in

• their customers getting reminders

• automated or manual solution

Questions for participants

1. Do you think some customers might start shopping in your store but not complete their order?

2. Are you interested in knowing if that’s the case?

3. If you had an option to remind your customers to complete their order, would you turn that option on?

4. How would you expect it to work? if needed, prompt them on

   1. channels (email, sms, etc..)

   2. frequency

   3. fully automated, automated with some manual settings, or manually triggered by admin

[Rachel]

Many thanks @Mario this is really exciting work!

While reviewing this, it occurred to me that I had misunderstood what “grid view” meant in the roadmap. I originally thought the grid would be based on categories, to ease the navigation on big shopfronts.

Given smaller shopfronts don’t need products to be organized by categories first, the grid view I had in mind needed to be optional. But here I don’t see any reason to not make this view the default view for all shops.

That would ease maintenance a lot on the long run.

@instance_managers do you see use cases where this grid view would not be welcomed?

[tschumilas]

I just had a zoom with 3 of our larger hubs and am sharing feedback on the above.

Shop navigation

Filter by producer is desired.

Categories - Definately hubs seek the ability to create their own categories. Hubs are very diverse in the product mix they sell. One hub suggested this could be on the enterprise settings screen, along with other business details. There, a hub is presented with a mother list of categories (created by super admin in configuration) and the hub selects a subset of categories. These categories populate the category selection drop down on the producer’s bulk product page. If a producer sells through 2 or more hubs, then each hub’s categories populate the list. (Not discussed - what about producer’s who ‘sell own’ - how do they get categories? What happens when a producer stops selling through a given hub?..)
**
Enable multiple categories per product** - Also - hubs are looking for the ability for a producer to attach multiple categories to a product/variant. Often a product fits 2 or more categories like: the product ‘potatoes’ could be in the category ‘root vegetables’ or ‘vegetables’. This could be the most efficient way to give hubs shop flexibility. For example the flower ‘cosmos’ could be attached to categories: ‘flowers’, ‘white flowers’, ‘specials’ This would be possible if a hub, who is given permission to ‘add to order cycle’ could also add new categories to products. (I know its a different way than we see categories today - but it could accomlish some flexibility hubs are looking for)

Properties - Keep properties but perhaps enhance. At present, a property is created by super admin, and the producer can select it for ‘all’ their products or for selected products. This is good. In addition, hubs suggest the creation of ‘dedicated’ hub-selected properties. Where a hub can create, or select from super-admin created, select properties. These are ways to message the shopfront with criteria such as: ‘available on Wednesdays only’, or ‘white products on special this week’. Generally hubs are seeking the ability to customize shops more. (My observation - producers want properties that describe their brand and the product like: organic, no spray…) But hubs want properties to help them sell (like ‘on sale’ or ‘premium products’.) The hubs want to be able to apply properties themselves, across producers, not rely on producers setting properties.

Another suggestion to enable searching was having an alphabet above the search field. So I can select ‘a’ or ‘n’ to jump to those products in the list. Category searching only helps if a hub has lots of categories - and right now, that is not the case.

Another suggestion is to have a place at the top of the shopfront for ‘information about this shop’. Right now, the only place for this is on the enterprise’s ‘home’ tab. But when enterprises have mutliple shops open simultaneously - it means for cumbersome messaging like: If you are buying for pickup at …. then…. If you are buying in our Mother’s Day shop, then……

Timed Shopping or Merging Orders

The single most needed things for these hubs is timed shopping or else the ability to merge orders. This is not a surprise - its the top issue flower hubs first mentioned 3 years ago, and honestly they are getting frustrated that we have not been able to assist with this. Most sales in these stores occur in the first 15 minutes of order cycle opening. Most of these hubs sell products where supply is limited. Buyers scramble to buy the specialized (limited) products first. Buyers experience things being pulled out of their carts before they can complete chekout. So in response, buyers enter the shop, make a quick order for 1 product and checkout. Then they go back in, make a second order to secure more products etc……. This results in frustrated buyers and multiple orders per buyer per order cycle. This means the hub manages more orders than they should have to, and more payments than they should have to. For example in most of these hubs, a buyer places 3-5 orders per order cycle. The solution is NOT a timed checkout. The problem has already occurred before the checkout. We need either timed shopping (timer starts when the customer puts the first item into a cart) OR leave shoppers place multiple orders, and build the ability for the hub to merge orders within the same OC on the back end.)

Grid view

Everyone liks grid view. It should be the default, and only view. No need to keep the list view. Even on mobile - where you really only see 2 variants side by side, this is preferred.

Like the variant ‘pop up’ where you click the primary product, and its variants pop up. Biggest concern is navigation. If I select potatoes and then select 2 kg, I want to go back to exactly where left off, not back to the category again. For example - I’m searching products down the shop list under the category ‘flowers’. I click a product grouping/product called ‘cosmos’. I go to the popup. I select ‘red’ and put it in my cart. I DO NOT want to go back to the top of the ‘flowers’ category and start again. There are hundreds of products in that category and I don’t want to scroll again. I want the pop up to close and I go back to where I left off with my scrolling. (Hubs were very adamant on this point - don’t return to the top of the category again)

Hubs would like the pie chart to be optional. They feel few customers use it and it clutters things unnecessarily. Plus many of these hubs sell both retail and wholesale, and the retail markup is 300%, and they don’t want customers to see that.

Definately interested in the product page being public before an order cycle is ‘live’. (Public might be poor wording because wholesale shops are private to specific customers. But they want these customers to see availability early.) Suggestion would be that as soon as the hub creates an order cycle, a display only shop goes live - like a ‘coming up’ kind of order cycle. No one can purchase in this OC yet becuase it is not open yet. When the OC opening time arrives, this shop goes live and begins taking orders. (Right now wLe use a hack to create a ‘display only’ order cycle where the payment method is inactive. These hubs would like this to be automatic. ie the payment method becomes active at the time of OC opening. But before that, the shop displays)

Hubs also wondered about a ‘sold out’ area in the shop. That is - products that are entered into the order cycle, but become sold out, get automatically listed under a ‘sold out’ property for the duration of that order cycle. Then that property lifts off when the product goes into a new order cycle. Basically they want buyers to know what the missed by shopping too late.

Question re: do variants show in its own square or bundled. Hubs had a hard time imaging these options. (Maybe I couldn’t get the prototypes to work properly) They liked the pop up though - bigger issue is the navigation as outlined above.

Promotion of products was not a big theme for these wholesale hubs. They wouldn’t use product links in social media because they are private shops.

Image Management

Definately want the ability to link an image clearly to a variant in the product group. These hubs use variant lists to sell products by different colour generally (not so much by different sizes/weights). Showing colour is critical for them. Maybe a unique group - but the flower hubs definately need images attached to variants. (Perhaps they need to make each variant a separate product, and what is now the product becomes a category… but this will create hundreds of more categories) Also noting that they were thinking like sellers not product creators. As a producer - for me, i want the easiest way possible to upload images from mobile. These hub managers don’t create the images, their suppliers do that.

Checkout Process

Hubs wonder if its possible to do the checkout steps without separate pages. It feels like a lot of steps to customers.

Hubs say about 2 customers a week end up not placing orders because they don’t complete the checkout. They would like an abandoned cart reminder, by email, send no more than 30 minutes after the cart is abandoned (You were shopping at… and did not complete the checkout. If you intended to make a purchase, do so before the shop closes… - with a link that takes them back to their open cart) They say this is standard in other ecommerce.

Conclusion

Love grid view. Losing orders to abandoned carts. Need variant-focused images. Navigation back to where you left of (not category top) is critcal in shops with hundreds of products.

Discussion went beyond the prototypes. I learned that one of the biggest issue is that these hubs are really looking for more ability to stage products for sale, without relying on what the supplier has entered. They want to add categories or properties that allow shopping by colour, or stem length, or quick sale… They feel their marketing ability is held back by a system that only gives producers the ability to add product categories or properties. Hubs want to use some kind of categorization or properties that help them sell products.

Timed shopping or back office order merging remains their primary issue.

[Mario]

Thank you so much @tschumilas for running these interviews and the excellent synthesis of the sessions.

Some very interesting and clear feedback here. And I truly appreciate your assessment within this summary as well. This is definitely informing some decisions that we need to take soon.

This is overlapping a bit with some analysis of the data model that @Rachel and I have been doing, but I am starting to be quite confident that given the grid view is getting positive feedback across the board, and showing products + overlay list of variants seems to be the expected for the grid, we could move some of that work to early development. I am catching up with Ahmed to figure out the dev sequencing for grid view, and devs will likely start to work on it very soon.

Regarding multiple images, the feedback from these hubs is clear, but I would like to get a few more insights and really think it though against the data model before committing to a decision between uploading at a variant or product level. Once that is decided, we already have most of the issues and designs prepared already and can quickly move to development.

Similarly, product pages have a decent level of certainty, also considering the historical demand for it. But the overlap with the data model (and grid view to an extent) requires us to think it through quite a bit. I might kick off some technical analysis of it with the devs in the meantime.

Categories is a tricky one. Feedback is coming through quite clear - people want more control and flexibility, but the implications of shifting to that, and what that means for DFC, are not so clear to me at the moment. We will need some internal analysis and workshops.

Again some clear feedback on checkout and reminders. I don’t know if having a single page for checkout is feasible or desirable internally, especially given we have split it not long ago. But we could definitely bring forward reminders and some tweaks to the checkout steps once we get a few more insights.

Some very valuable stories too regarding merging orders. I wonder if this is specific to flower producers and hubs or might happen for other types of production? I believe in the UK flower hubs are also growing, maybe they are facing a similar challenge.

Their frustration is concerning though. Do you think this might be a big enough issue to get them to reconsider the software they use?

Thank you again for your help Theresa

[emilythericky]

Some preliminary feedback:

Creating categories and subcategories – folks want this 100%, I want this! Also category navigation is crucial – farmer’s market hubs have LOTS of categories and need lots more.

Multiple images per product, with images for specific variants – also 100%.

Grid view and better shop organization overall is really necessary to be aligned with modern online shopping expectations and “the competition.” Scrolling sucks! Curious how this would work for products that carry lots of variants (ie >20).

Cart reminders would be really great, but not as top priority as the above. I also have the problem of customers not completing orders because of too many steps – however this has been greatly improved in the last couple years compared to, say 2022, when half a dozen orders would be abandoned mid-checkout for a given hub. I’d definitely prefer automated cart email reminders – once per abandoned cart, within some alotted time before the order cycle closes – would be nice if the settings for this were customizable.

Being able to show the last order cycle products available while orders are closed would be ideal– both for growers and for customers (I already do this with a special tagged order cycle for growers so they can reference prices, but can’t risk it for customers who will invariable try to place an order and get mad about it.)

We also have folks asking about “Sold-out” – lots of folks come looking for something and think they just can’t find it and spin their wheels thinking they are being dumb when the product sold out – i can see this being an issue on the backend when the default is to select all incoming products that likely includes a lot of “dead” products that aren’t current…

[Karla]

Thanks @Mario for summarizing proposed feature updates to the shopfront. I sent them to some of our food hub/producers in Canada for feedback and have heard back from a few. Overall, feedback was positive and they look forward to the changes.

One hub was most excited about updates to product categories. Having more customization with categories available definitely highly desired by hubs/producers, and I have heard this feedback many times in the past. It becomes an issues especially in Canada with two official languages, as categories are not translatable. That means that the only way to have categories available in 2 languages is to have 2x the number of categories, which makes for an even longer list for ALL producers to choose from. Because of this we have been very careful to only add new/translated categories when requested. If something like @tschumilas proposed above was available, where a hub (and producer) could choose their list of categories from a Master list (all categories for an instance), and only these would appear as options for their products, then I think with would be very helpful for allowing more customization of categories and solve having them in available in 2 languages (i.e. French hub would only have to see the french categories).

Allowing separate images for the the different product options (variants) was also very anticipated.

Having products displayed (from the previous of upcoming order cycle) even when their shop is currently closed was also desired. This would help customers to know what is available/upcoming.

Thanks again for all your work on this!

[tschumilas]

missed your question on this - right now, the flower hubs are kind of a ‘captive market’ here in Canada because we are working closely with them, and offering a dedicated support person who understands cut flower marketing/selling/growing (me). I think these hubs are ‘sticking it out’ with OFN - eventhough they are frustrated - because of my work with them. Otherwise, yes, they would definately have left OFN by now - or they would have banded together to develop something different.

[Mario]

Thank you all again for your contributions to this round of testing. I am happy with the insights gathered so far, as they clearly inform some decisions for the close future.

For @BethanOFN and Bernie (NZ instance): I would consider this round of feedback to be enough, but there will be more to test soon, so I will reach out again to you once I have something else to review with people. I hope that’s ok.

To summarise some of the key decisions coming from this research:

Grid view: dev is kicking off this or next week. We’ll focus on showing products as tiles + overlay list of variants for multi-variant products

Product pages: off the back of the decision on grid view, we’ll have pages for products only, and not for individual variants. Each product page will still show and allow to add variants to cart. This piece of work is likely going to start a bit later down the track though.

Multiple images: dev is kicking off this week. We’ll enable multiple images at variant level, as per conversation happening here.

Product categories: clear interest in full management of product taxonomy. We have just started inception for this with @dcook and @tschumilas , and the feedback gathered here will definitely inform our work. Not entirely sure when we’ll kick off development for it though. If you’re interested please follow the slack channel #product-taxonomy

Checkout and reminders: folks are aware of the abandoned checkout issue, and interested in reminders. These will be in our priority once some of the above features are on their way to production.

Other signals:

• being able to show products and their details before choosing OC or when sold out very desirable
• important to keep navigation position / filtering when browsing in the shop
• pie chart optional > we will likely move it to product details pages, then we’ll see if that’s enough or if we should consider an option to hide
• timed shopping or merging orders > this is a new insight to me. Will try to open a separate thread in the forum to investigate if other instances have heard this

Thank you all for your help!

[tschumilas]

Thanks for this!

I just wanted to give a brief explanation of ‘timed shopping’’ or ‘merging orders’ so others know where this is coming from.

OFN Canada has a number of hubs (wholesale cut flower hubs) where shopping is VERY brisk when the store opens. (Remember COVID? - like that, but all the time.) And so shoppers miss out on product with limited supply. First these hubs set up ‘premium’ order cycles, where buyers paid more, and opened these shops earlier. But in a year, all the buyers opted to be in the ‘premium’ buyer groups - so this didn’t help. We have set up various (rather labourous) systems outside of OFN where buyers can ‘reserve’ or ‘pre order’ product, but this just burdens hub managers who have to manually enter pre-order orders. The current situation is that buyers place many (often at least 3) orders per shop. They shop quick to get a limited product in their cart, and then checkout to secure it. Then they start a new orders….. Managing multiple orders per customer per order cycle takes hub managers more time.

Multiple orders per order cycle would be ok, if there was a way to merge the orders. Then it wouldn’t matter that a customer places 3, 5, 10… separate orders. Or, another solution is permitting buyers to edit orders. Then, a customer can login in, secure their first few product choices and checkout. Then login again, and add to that order ….. The tricky bit here though, is that customers will just load up their first order with everything the might possibly want, and then delete the items they don’t want, late in the order cycle, when no one else has the opportunity to buy (kind of like hoarding). So - for ‘customer can edit orders’ to work in this scenerio, the hub needs to be able to give permission to ‘add’ to order and not permission to ‘delete’ from order. Add and delete permissions need to be autonomous.

[Mario]

copied this over a new thread here