Spaenaur - Business & eCommerce

Spaenaur is recognized throughout North America as a leading distributor for industrial fasteners, hardware components and tools. It is operating since 1936 but they recently planned to open an eCommerce store to serve their customers from the comfort of their homes, saving them both time, energy and money. As part of the scope, we ideated, evaluated and redesigned their business website and designed their entire eCommerce store.

Client

Spaenaur Inc

Aug 2023 - Present

Scope

Competitive Analysis

Visual Design

Team

Sai Charan Kankipati

Vishwa Thesiya (UX/Industrial Designer)

Jeff Cameron (PM/Digital Marketing Manager)

A Developer & a Graphic Designer

Link

View Live Website

Context: How did it all start?

Joined as a CSA(Part-time) ended up as UX Consultants helping the company with their website redesign and eCommerce launch.

It all started when we (Group of 2 UX Designers) spoke out during our interview for a Part time CSA role, that we can help Spaenaur with their eCommerce design project. Fast forward to August 2023, we started working as UX Design consultants to redesign their existing business website and then continued to design their eCommerce platform covering end-end shopping exprience.

My Role

I did extensive Competitive Analysis to understand the market landscape, Participated in User Testing internally conducted by the company to experience the website firsthand and User Interface Design for both the websites.

"The Ask aka Requirement"

Spaenaur was looking for ways to cut down the load on their sales teams and convert their sales calls by simplifying the customer's buying experience, an easy solution is to build eCommerce. Their requirements are straightforward, to build an eCommerce store that is easy to use, navigate, and buy parts online easily. The catch was to allow users to find parts quickly like they are used to finding, through their popular 'Spaenaur Catalog'.

Challenges

After the project kicked off, we identified two main challenges to tackle before we could reach the project goals.

Too many clicks to find a part and place an order

With the existing website, users need to drill-down multiple sub-category levels to locate a part.

Launching an eCommerce store of a century old offline business

To establish and redefine the company's motto of delivering hard-to-find Fasteners Right Now.

Users

Power Users aka Existing Customers and New customers are the 2 main user groups we focused on to understand the underlying issues clearly. These are their needs and wants summarized as below:

Existing or Power Users:

Needs: Quickest possible way to order parts without having to spend too much time in search.

Wants: Seamless shopping experience resembling that of a physical shopping experience.

New Users:

Needs: Seamless shopping experiences, easy to use search and filters to find a part for their requirements.

Wants: Low-learning curve, eCommerce store that offer powerful search, recommendations based on needs and reliable customer support.

Project goal

Design a website that redefines Spaenaur's online presence while ensuring an intuitive customer experience for their new eCommerce store.

Project Scope

Redesign existing Business website experience and Design an online eCommerce store to keep delivering on company's promise of delivering fasteners right away.

Design

Challenge 1: Redefining Existing Website Experience

Problems:

Based on customer feedback and internal testing, we understood that the current website presents users with complications such as:

Difficulty in navigating

No filters to refine search results

Highly complicated Categorization

Too many clicks to find a desired category or product

Brainstorming & Solutions:

Through a series of internal discussions with the stakeholders & internal management, we've finally converged to these solutions:

Simplified navigation mimicing the categories of physical catalog

Redirecting the users to the Catalog to explore and find the part quickly and efficiently.

Users don't have to click through the website, they can simply use digital catalog to find the part and place an order through 'Request a Quote' page.

Challenge 2: Designing eCommerce Platform for a century-old offline fasteners business.

WIP: eCommerce store on Shopify

We have conducted extensive competitive analysis to determine what is the current market landscape. One of the biggest challenges we found were that a CMS based eCommerce platform which requires minimum maintenance, regular updates and end-end smooth eCommerce experience for the customers is of utmost importance. After evaluating multiple platforms we have finally landed on a Shopify's specific template which we are currently working on.

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