User experience Case Study - Notifications

A glance about notifications in an e-commerce application

Push Notification is one of the most important features that map the success of an e-commerce mobile app
Research
A notification is a message that displays outside your app’s UI to provide the user with reminders, communication from other people, or other timely information from your app. Users can tap the notification to open your app or take an action directly from the notification.
Notifications appear to users in different locations and formats, such as an icon in the status bar, a more detailed entry in the notification section application, as a badge on the app’s icon or smartphone screens.
E-commerce is the buying and selling of goods or services on the internet. Building an e-commerce application is a way to analyze the behavior and patterns of your target audience. Know their digital age and their likes and dislikes. This will help you create your e-commerce app as relatable as possible for them.
Type of notifications in an e-commerce application:
Enable human-to-human interaction: update about user's historical using the app, ongoing or upcoming promotions, personal information, finish onboarding process.
Function better in time management: manage orders, shipping status.
Control or resolve device states: update new install app versions, app settings.
Your customers have their needs and want, you have the required supply to fulfill them but how to bridge this gap of communication?
Push notification is the key!
Push Notification is one of the most important features that lead to the success of an e-commerce mobile app. They enhance customer engagement as it keeps them informed about the referral, discounts, sales, promotions, and offers, to keep them coming back for more. Notifications also keep the app lord informed about what happens with their users.

Notifications increase communication between user and product
User Interview
After conducting research and define the process, I've started to move to interview real customers who first used the e-commerce application for the first time.
60% of interviewed users said they prefer open notifications than scrolling down forever to pick up the product from a complex list and category. 40% of interviewed users said they want to search exactly what they’ve had the plan to purchase rather than open suggestions from notifications, they think it's simply another advertising from sellers.
90% of interviewed users consider notification is the fastest way to manage their behavioral activities on the application. 10% of interviewed users don't understand how notifications work.
80% of interviewed users answer they’d like to be informed about new application updates and sales off vouchers. 20% of interviewed users answer they don’t know where to update their application.

Notification is the fastest way to manage their behavioral activities on the application.
User Persona
Alison is a 38 years old married female who owns a retail physical store and an online store. She has a busy life and usually uses the smartphone for her daily activities. She uses a collection of e-commerce applications to purchase products from wholesalers.
Alison daily retail store activities:
Open the physical store. Open the app on her phone and access the purchase order list from her customer.
Organize the products in the physical store. Check the shipping status of product orders.
Receive products ordered from wholesalers to her store inventory. Start to call shipping services to transfer history orders.
Start to sell and collect money from customers who purchase products from the physical store. Post new products existed on the physical store to the online retail store.
Answer customers about the promotions program and apply customer service face to face or through the phone. Upload a promotions program to an online retail store and chat with the buyer.

A user persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer
Alison goals and needs:
She wants to manage her store more productively.
She wants to increase sales orders daily, weekly and monthly.
She needs a platform to help her to manage her activities.
She believes communicate with the customer in a better way which gains more orders.
She wants to open more stores and expand its brand in the near future.
Alison motivations:
Her main motivation is making more profit to save for her children's university fund.
To have more time with her children but her store is still maintained productively.
Her customers could order products without physically going to the store.
Alison frustrations:
She has no time to make a proper plan for her store activities.
She has a little amount of time for her children because of her heavy workload.
She doesn’t have a strong connection with the main wholesalers so it's hard to check the product quality. There's no way to check responsibility from any side if product quality is bad or info is not like descriptions.
She’s struggling with selling to customers online and offline at the same time.
She has no experience in managing store finance, training staff, operate a retail store, shipping info.

Sometimes what we design is not what user’s looking for. That's why UX matters.
User Journey
After understanding the user persona, I've started to build a user journey followed the form “As a retail store owner, Alison wants to (goals and needs), so that she could achieve (motivations)/fix her (frustrations).”
As a retail store owner, Alison wants to manage her store productively, so she could have more time to make a proper plan for her store activities.
As a retail store owner, Alison wants to increase sales orders daily, weekly and monthly, so she could make more profit for her children’s future plan.
As a retail store owner, Alison needs a platform to help her to manage her activities, so her customers could order products without physically going to the store.
As a retail store owner, Alison believes communicate with the customer in a better way which gains more orders, so she could enhance the product quality and check responsibility if product quality is bad or info is not like descriptions.
As a retail store owner, Alison wants to open more stores and expand its brand in the near future, so she could ask for help resources center about managing the store finance, training staff, operate a retail store, shipping info…
User Flow
As we decided to firstly design iOS application, user flow is an important part to define how the user interacts with the app step-by-step through screens.

User flow captures user journey step-by-step how functions work on the app.
Wireframe & Prototyping
Wireframing is a great way to test ideas in our UX projects, and here's what I come up with

Wireframe and prototype
Design

Hope you have a great time, thank you for your patience!