While creating need statements, establish a corresponding metric of success. Using this approach will reduce the friction down the line. Further, you will set a precise bar for the team or organisation.
And, undoubtedly design thinking adds much value to the development of an MVP by increasing the probability of success via innovation, continual redesign, and understanding the evolving customer needs.
Then these components are combined into a single sentence with the pattern – A user needs (name the need) to accomplish (goal). Make sure that a user corresponds to a specific persona or an actual end-user segment you’ve initially researched on. Also, keep in mind that users are not always aware of their needs, even though they may say so.
You can process shopping behaviour through analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to understand and predict customers’ buying choices in an eCommerce environment.
Once created, a user need statement acts as a guiding force, aligning what is needed by the team designing and developing the MVP of an eCommerce site.
Convergent thinking, on the other hand, is a general practice to select the optimal solution from the ideas out of different sources.
Designing an MVP Effectively
Further, it is well known that the main principle of MVP is viability. So an eCommerce product designed and developed should work smoothly by resolving customers’ pain points while providing an immersive, dynamic and engaging user experience.
- Business Stakeholder- “MVP is the foremost thing needed by the clients.”
- Engineer- “MVP contains a minimum feature set to resolve a given problem.”
- Designer- “MVP is the quickest way to design and deliver a viable product.”
While evaluating the ideas, you think and decide which one is the most promising. Convergent thinking typically calls for accuracy, speed, and knowledge that designers can use to analyse, evaluate, filter, clarify and modify ideas that have been generated in divergent thinking.
You can process shopping behaviour through analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to understand and predict customers’ buying choices in an eCommerce environment.
This also increases loyalty and virality, transforming customers into repeat customers. Good eCommerce design can amplify results on the eCommerce website.
Importance of eCommerce User Experience
As users are hooked to their smartphones, tablets, laptops, and more, digital experiences are significant for mobile experiences.
The underpinning of success in eCommerce is providing a rich online buying experience to users. It is crucial to consider all the possible customer use cases and their needs before designing or redesigning an eCommerce website. Traditionally you should generate a user need statement.
Good eCommerce design can amplify results on the eCommerce website.
MVP Steps (Implementation – Analysis – Modifications)
Design Thinking – Knowing the Customers and Solving their Problems
Author Bio: Saurabh Thakur is an eCommerce analyst and business consultant. He helps businesses or startup firms to establish their online businesses through white label partnership programs. He has been active in this industry for the past seven years.
If the user interface is designed intuitively, then the whole buying experience of customers becomes enjoyable and memorable.
How Does Design Affect an eCommerce Site?
The pace of technology adoption by individuals has been rapid. As consumers get easily lured by conducive experiences, it becomes pivotal for eCommerce sites to provide immersive and intuitive interfaces, offering seamless buying experiences across all channels.
The pace of technology adoption by individuals has been rapid. As consumers get easily lured by conducive experiences, it becomes pivotal for eCommerce sites to provide immersive and intuitive interfaces, offering seamless buying experiences across all channels.
Must-Have – For an eCommerce website, it is essential to have core features like multi-payment options, intuitive navigation, 24×7 customer service, etc. These features are essential and should be incorporated into the MVP design. All features listed as a must hold the topmost priority and will be catered to before the set of items labelled as ‘Should’.
If you are active in both the sectors like B2C and B2B, it is essential to consider MVP implementation for only a defined target audience. For instance, you can first cater to a B2C audience and later B2B or vice versa. This way, customers of one segment will be able to use the store while implementing solutions for the rest in other sprints.
Further, product designing as an MVP helps in providing immediate value. Its design can reveal the most appropriate direction for further iterations, and additionally, MVP development can also minimise product development costs.
Divergent and Convergent Thinking – Design Thinking Types
Generating User Need Statement
What is Divergent Thinking?
It lets you design better user experiences to cross guard at the intersection of humanity and technology. Further, the design thinking approach is simple and highly human before anything becomes digital.
Aligning the Team With a Concise Goal
What is Convergent Thinking?
If you are not sure whether your customers like personalised products or not, in such a case, you can use a form to understand their inclination towards personalisation. A few ways to collect their feedback are:
This blog sheds light on how design thinking leads to a better minimum viable product for eCommerce Businesses.
Adopting Divergent and Convergent Thinking for MVP Designing
It is important to note that the non-inclusion of a feature like this might not hinder the project at this stage, but it will surely enhance the experience offered.
Should Have – This incorporates the features in the eCommerce product but are not available at the current stage. Users should recover their password or reset using the forgotten password utility.
Designing Key Points that Give an Edge to eCommerce MVP
Identifying the Must-Have Elements of MVP – The MoSCoW Method
Designers use divergent thinking to design an eCommerce business in the initial ideation stages. Designers iterate or brainstorm creative solutions whenever there is a challenge to solve.
The user experience offered by an eCommerce website involves everything that affects a person’s perception, feelings, interaction with a digital product, feature or service.
- Mo – Must Have
- S – Should Have
- Co – Could Have
- W – Would Have
Furthermore, as you work more insightfully, you will understand that well-defined use cases and agile practices are the bedrock for designing.
To please your customers, it is pivotal to anticipate their needs. Using the design thinking, problem-solving approach, you can assess the known aspects of a problem specific to the design.
The cognitive and collaborative process of generating a user need statement, and a finished statement can have several benefits. But first, let us understand its three components:
Design thinking effectively guides through the several stages of ideation so that a solution that addresses customers’ pain points is built.
User need statements, if crafted appropriately, add to the benefit of providing a metric for the success before the stage of ideation, prototyping, and testing of the design eCommerce MVP.
It helps understand emotions, needs, behaviour, and motivation. The nature of generating ideas and potential solutions is sensitive and makes the context of operation (while interacting with a feature) interesting.
Setting a Benchmark and Measuring the Success
The ‘won’t have’ features in the current release of the MVP will not be incorporated. However, they might be considered in the next release.
Henry Ford once said, “If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” So it is essential to filter and understand the real needs of your users.
- Implementation – In the beginning, basic functionalities solve the core pain points.
- Analysis – Then, analysis is done to check if the designed eCommerce MVP is improving sales or not. This also incorporated gathering feedback from the early adopters.
- Modifications – This step includes adding new functionalities, optimising or removing the ones that don’t work, and so on.
Could Have – These features are those that are additional. Once the app is tested for the main functionality, these features can be added only if the project delivery time is not affected.
Focusing UX/Design on Shopping Path Creation
Here, we would also like to mention that the most successful eCommerce businesses like Amazon, Groupon, and more, started as MVPs.
Just include necessary integrations
The scope of your Minimum Viable Product can be subjective and can vary as per business needs, industry, product purpose, competition, and audience segments. Depending on whom you ask, the definition of MVP will differ. For example:
Define Target Audience (First B2C or B2B or Vice Versa)
By employing divergent thinking, designers help make a client’s eCommerce website/app more competitive and innovative in the market. You can also use design thinking during the discovery and validation phase.
Use a Form to Understand Customer Inclination Towards Personalisation
You can do this by adopting the human-centric approach – “Design Thinking”.
- Questionnaire – After the purchase process is finished, you can ask several questions from customers regarding their experience and the missing functionalities.
- Individual Calls – This is important, especially in the case of B2B eCommerce platforms. So by contacting customers over the phone, you can ask about their experiences and improvements that they would like to have (if any).
- Mail – Another way to get in touch with the customers regarding their feedback is via mail. Let them know that their feedback is essential for future iterations.
- LiveChat – Many customers might choose to communicate via email or phone, but some choose to chat. You can also resolve the possible obstacles in the shopping path via live chat.
- Google Analytics – You can use this tool to track the effectiveness of sales, transactions, time of purchase, and more. You can also identify patterns and trends of how visitors engage with the eCommerce website via google analytics.
- Tools for Tracking User Behaviour – In addition to google analytics, You can also use specific analytical tools like heat maps to track user behaviour. Tools used to track user behaviour can either be free or paid, but they show the individual elements clicked by customers. They also make you aware that it is essential to work on product pages other than the main page as customers can find their way from the search engine to the product.
Summary
These tools can also aid in designing the eCommerce site to provide a more personalised experience to customers.
User Need Statements in Practice
How to use Design Thinking in your MVP for eCommerce
