Hey! You've made it to my Capstone project website. From July 2019 to July 2020 I worked on my Master's degree from University of Georgia's Emerging Media program. I learned a lot about UX, front-end coding (fun fact: I coded this very website myself!), prototyping softwares, user journey maps, user research, and more in this past year. Along the way, I had internships at Home Depot as a User Experience Designer, as well as the opportunity to be a TA for UGA's Entertainment and Media Studies program. I love combining design and technology and this program has allowed me to do just that. Check out my portfolio if you'd like to see some of the other work I've done. Keep scrolling to learn more about my final Capstone project for my Master's program.
The Client
For my final Capstone project, I chose to work with a client named Jalema. Jalema has been a leading office supply manufacturer since 1947 and provides top quality materials and products to their customers.
Jalema's company catchphrase of "Organizing your world" explains their mission. The files and accessories provide protection, accessibility and space savings to any office environment. The Jalema product line creates order out of chaos.
The Problem
Jalema's website has not been updated since the early 2000s. Not only is it outdated looking, it is also very difficult for customers to place orders on it. There are lots of duplicate products, confusing information architecture, and broken links. In the video below, you can see how Jalema's website has nearly 100 listings of the same product. There is an information overload when customers attempt to use the website currently.
Jalema's website is so difficult to use that nearly 75% of Jalema's orders are placed over the phone, as customers give up attempting to place orders online. When customers call in an order, it sets off a manual chain of events for Jalema. First off, an employee manually receives the order, then manually places it in the system, then manually creates a picking list of all the orders received that day. Then they manually send the picking list to the warehouse, where the warehouse picks the product, then packages and ships it to the customer. Among all these manual steps, mistakes happen. Mistakes result in re-shipments, which then results in lost time and money for Jalema.
Jalema's manual order fulfillment process
The Solution
Redesigning Jalema's website has made it more user-friendly, therefore allowing more to easily place orders online rather than calling them in. I was able to get rid of duplicate listings, include higher quality images, fix broken links, and overall make the user experience much better for Jalema's customers. I was able to achieve this by building Jalema's new website from scratch on Shopify and WordPress, the two leading e-commerce platforms in the world.
Improving the online user experience will result in an increase in online orders. This is beneficial to Jalema for two reasons: an increase of sales = more money! The second reason is that customers placing orders online leads to an automated order fulfillment process. No human involvement in the order fulfillment process = no human errors, and therefore time and money saved for Jalema.
I was able to automate the order fulfillment process by installing a UPS plugin on the new website. The UPS plugin automatically sends that days orders directly to the warehouse, where the products can be packaged and shipped, and thus getting rid of any manual processes.
Jalema's new automated order fulfillment process
WordPress & Shopify
After speaking with my client, we decided to create websites using two different platforms: WordPress and Shopify. We had seen conflicting information on which website building platform is better, so we tested them both out! Keep scrolling to see the results.
WordPress
Through several different WordPress plugins, such as Woocommerce, the UPS shipping plugin, and several more, I was able to design a fully functional e-commerce website. WordPress allowed me to fully customize the site to meet all of Jalema's specific needs. Using WordPress to create the website was frustrating and very time-consuming. When creating WordPress sites, you have to build out most, if not all, components by hand. There isn't a pre-made option for you. While this ended up taking more time, it led to the site being completely customized to Jalema and fitting their needs perfectly.
Shopify
Shopify is on the rise when it comes to ecommerce websites, and it is expected to soon become the #1 ecommerce website host over WordPress. Shopify was much easier to create a website on, and less complicated to use. However Shopify did not give me the same customization options that WordPress offered. Shopify is mostly template-based, whereas with WordPress you have to build out the website components by hand (so to speak). However, I was able to pick a template that worked very well for Jalema's needs.
The Winner is ... Shopify!
After A/B testing, consulting with my client, and several usability tests, we found that the Shopify website fits the needs of Jalema and their customers the best. Shopify performed much better in usability tests, as users on average were able to complete tasks 30 seconds faster on the Shopify website versus the Wordpress one. Also, 100% of users preferred the Shopify website over the Wordpress website, and 100% of users found the Shopify website moderately to very easy to use, whereas 54% of users found the Wordpress site to be moderately to very difficult to use.
I couldn't have gotten here with out a lot of research, help from teachers and friends, or my client, Jalema! Take a look below to see some of the documentation that I created throughout this journey.
All the user research I conducted including A/B testing, survey results, and interviewing users can be found here. (This is where you see Shopify and WordPress go head-to-head!)
