Overview
Yeo Valley (pronounced 'Yo Valley' 🤯) is one of the largest organic dairy producers in the UK. Still family owned and based in Somerset. They produce natural yoghurt, milk, butter, kefir and lots more. They are one of the only dairy companies that own their own herds of cows and strive to met ethical livestock practices. They have a hugely popular loyalty program called 'Yeokens' which customers get from the product packaging, scan them and collect them to redeem anything from a tote bag to days out depending on how much you save. There are roughly 650,000 collectors or 'Yeokeners' in the UK.
Problem statement
1. On of the main reasons people go to the Yeo Valley website is to save and redeem Yeokens. Yeo Valley wanted to explore what could make people explore other parts of the website and what could be done to tempt them.
2. Yeo Valley's creative agency designed the website and wanted to do some usability testing on it to make sure it was useable for their customers.
Users and audience
'Yeokeners': people who are active collectors of Yeokens and bank them at least 2-3 times a week. Non-active Yeoken collectors who regularly buy Yeo Valley products.
Roles and responsibilities
The project team: Experience Designer (me), Senior Experience Designer (oversight), Senior Project Manager, Client Partner, Creative Director (Yeo Valley's creative agency), Strategy Director (Yeo Valley's creative agency), Marketing Manager (Yeo Valley).
My personal roles in the project:
- stakeholder workshop facilitation
- stakeholder management
- leading the project
- writing a recruitment brief
- managing the recruitment partner recruiting participants
- writing a discussion guide
- user research facilitation
- research analysis
- research playback to the client
Scope and constraints
The project was to cover research only, no design. We could only present recommendations to Yeo Valley and their creative agency. This potentially meant some difficult but honest conversations (depending on the findings) if things needed to be improved.
Process and what I did
Firstly we held a stakeholder workshop with the client and the creative agency to establish what we wanted to test, who we wanted to test with, what we wanted to ask, what tasks we wanted people to complete and understand any current pain points.
I then wrote a recruitment brief for the participant recruitment partner to recruit participants and discussion guide for the sessions. I then ran a pilot session to test our guide before we ran the actual research sessions.
We then ran 12 remote usability research sessions over 2 days with 5 Yeoken collectors and 7 non Yeoken collectors.
Then after the analysis we presented this back to Yeo Valley and their creative agency.
Outcomes and lessons
Our executive summary:
The core issue we saw throughout the research was poor discoverability.
- Low discoverability of products and how people find out about you through various channels
- Low discoverability of content about the mission and values of Yeo Valley and content that is relevant to them
- Low discoverability of information on Yeokens, the benefits and how to use them
This is exacerbated by navigation and usability issues that were picked up in the research sessions.
Executive recommendations:
1. Introduce contextual cross linking throughout the key journeys of both groups of users to help introduce them to other content where applicable, especially in the Yeoken area and journeys.
2. Fix the usability issues that are exacerbating the low discoverability of content people are experiencing.
3. Fix the issues around the navigation to allow people to find their way around the website easier which will help them find more information and content.
We then broke all the 44 findings down into 6 core sections and ranked each finding by level of severity:
1. Yeokeners task mode: Yeokeners have one main task in mind when they come to the website - they want to bank their Yeokens. They have a very specific mind set which is to complete their goal.
2. Homepage & navigation: The navigation is under performing due to poor labelling and ambiguous titles. It’s also hidden away behind a burger menu. People expected a little more from the homepage. They wanted to see more content like products and blog content.
3. Usability: There are some key usability issues that need addressing which are exacerbating low discovery of content and the overall navigability of the website.
4. Website content: When participants found the content, they found it engaging. However the content wasn’t fit for purpose for all audience types.
5. Products and behaviours: People want to discover, try and buy more Yeo Valley products. But they are hindered by product availability and lack of awareness.
6. Views on Yeokens are positive from both groups of people we tested with. Once people where made aware of them they were interested. People that already collect them love banking them.
We then gave specific recommendations for each section for Yeo Valley to action.
Stakeholder workshop:
Notes and analysis:
Some of our findings:
Tools
Zoom, Airtable, Google Slides, Mural
Role
Senior Experience Designer and chief kefir eater 🤤 😋