Project Brief
Working with a YYC Beeswax on an applied consumer behaviour challenge they are currently facing. These challenges will mostly have to do with improving marketing strategies.
Context
YYC Beeswax is a small Calgary-based wax company specializing in locally-sourced beeswax products. They sell entirely online, and they operate from their website, yycwax.com. Currently, the company has two main focuses, Do it yourself (DIY) and luxury products. The company was founded by software engineer Lisa Graham, who noticed an opportunity in the market regarding Alberta-grown beeswax. While Alberta is a significant producer of honey, beeswax, a byproduct of this process, took a lot of work to come by in sheets for crafters looking to make rolled beeswax candles. Lisa built a business to fill this gap in the market, which grew into what YYC Beeswax is today. Currently, Lisa has expanded the business covering two types of products DIY (do it yourself) and luxury items.
Outcomes
There are three components to this project:
A Midterm Progress Report: covering the initial framing of the challenge and plans for the rest of the project.
A Written Report: summarizing how the challenge is addressed.
The High-level Methods and Results Presentation: explaining the final results and findings of the challenge.
Our Approach
The Group: Bianca Garcia, Amanat Dhillon, Jillian Suess, Lauren Holden, and Sydney Boyce.
The focus of our approach is on the DIY collection. The best-selling items on the site are the beeswax sheets, a DIY product. The DIY collection is also where the market gap was first recognized in the company’s founding. Sticking to the tried and true business makes the most sense as the company is still on the smaller side. A book is also being developed based on the DIY collection to attract more customers. Focusing on the DIY side of the business now, where there is the most room for growth and the best results, makes the most sense moving forward.
My Role
Facilitating Discussion and Communication with Lisa
Adapting the Mission Statement
Developing Company Values & Connecting Those to Consumer Values
Translating and Relating Marketing/Design Terminology to our Project and Client
Implementing the Current Website’s User-Testing Results into New Proposed Website Wireframes
Conversations with Lisa
Initially, we were excited to work with Lisa on the Luxury side of her brand. These products are the newest line of products to the company and showed great potential. However, after completing some laddering activities and further conversation with Lisa, we decided alongside the founder that it would make the most sense for the company at this point to move forward on her DIY branded items.
Laddering Activity
Laddering activities are done to understand better a consumer’s values and why they may impact purchasing activities.
The example below shows the results of the laddering activity we ran for Burt’s Bees Grapefruit chapstick, which would be a similar product to that of YYC Beeswax Chapsticks.
Initial Suggestions
We chose to adapt the current mission statement to align with the DIY collection and give it the refresh that you had mentioned it needed, as stated by Lisa. It is “To provide high-quality products and educational experiences to foster creativity and promote cross-disciplinary education for learners of all ages in a respectful environment while supporting the local community and environment.”
Narrows the focus onto experiences that could include DIY kits and workshops and even leaves room for further growth.
After speaking with Lisa and picking out concepts from the YYC Beeswax website, we concluded that the company has three core values. The first is community which ties to a consumer's sense of belonging and relatedness from a marketing perspective.
The second is Creativity, which contributes to a consumer’s autonomy and self-esteem.
The third is the Environment, which could tie to a consumer’s sense of belonging, associative groups, and general norms.
These values can be used as a part of the brand strategy when marketing to connect the company to the consumer and their values.
YYC’s E-commerce
This company is an e-commerce site, meaning its business is nearly entirely online. While YYC Beeswax has done some local markets and has workshops in its warehouse, they are primarily a business that operates online. A benefit to the e-commerce format is that the cost of daily operations is significantly lower as there are no rent costs and less staffing required. The costs consist primarily of running the site and updating it as necessary. It is an excellent platform for a smaller start-up like YYC Beeswax.
Lauren determined:
The numbers from Google Analytics show several issues with the customer experience on the website. Seeing how low the time spent on the site is, combined with the low rate of actual purchases compared to visitors, shows an issue. Visitors are not buying on the site and are leaving the site too quickly to have looked at products. This indicates a problem with their website and consumer experience rather than the products.
Bianca and I hypothesized there could be two significant factors at play with the website.
The Aesthetic-Usability Effect and Choice Overload.
To Confirm this hypothesis, we as a group decided to do usability testing on the current YYC Beeswax website.
What is a Usability Test?
A usability test is a set of tasks done by someone who is unfamiliar with the process.
Why are They Done?
Example of a Task from Usability Test
The test was ran and developed by Bianca
Find out further information on YYC Beeswax’s company on their website.
Scenario → You are an Albertan trying to purchase locally-made beauty and home products. You are trying to learn more about YYC Beeswax and its company goals, missions, and values.
She needs help finding the ABOUT section and notices that she does not see that here. She doesn’t want to contact the website before seeing anything (suggests putting the contact button at the bottom instead and having the about at the top).
The user testing did confirm that there was both Choice Overload and a lack of Aesthetic-Usability Effects.
Customers were not trusting the website fully because of its overall aesthetic.
We determined that the reason for Choice Overload was due to Featurism. The website was trying to do too many things at once. This, in turn, was leaving consumers overwhelmed.
Suggested Website Alterations
It was determined that the budget for the website was quite low as Lisa would like to keep the work in-house. Therefore, we chose to provide recommendations to the website that the founder herself would be able to implement.
Shown are the suggested website alterations through polished wireframes. This way they feel “real” enough for the client to visualize without having to prototype the website.
References
Akkoc, U. (2022). Qualitative research. [PowerPoint Presentation]. University of Alberta, MARK 312.
Castelo, N. (2022a). Choice Architecture. [Microsoft PowerPoint]. University of Alberta, MARK 320.Castelo, N. (2022b). Motivation. [Google Docs]. University of Alberta, MARK 320.
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Why do usability testing? Praxent. (2020, June 12). Retrieved December 3, 2022, from https://praxent.com/blog/usability-testing-4-reasons-top-priority#:~:text=The%20purpose%20of%20usability%20testing%20is%20to%20ensure%20the%20plan,%2C%20needs%2C%20and%20expectations%20upfront.
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Note: for access to the complete project (paper and presentations) please get in touch. See contact information in the footer.