Experiment Zone

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Director of Product Management at a B2B commerce platform for the automotive aftermarket industry that focuses on simplifying complex vehicle repair.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Experiment Zone?

Our B2B e-commerce platform was built a couple of years ago as an MVP and now there's $60M of revenue funneling through the system. We know we needed to improve our site's overall usability and wanted to perform an audit so we can measure the impact from start to finish with a new website design.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We were recommended the vendor through a contact, engaged in conversation and were immediately impressed at their expertise and offering.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We hired the team to use the Baymard Institute's usability audit tool. It is an extensive tool that provides actual values to each section of a website.

The team met with us to understand the scope, their roles, settle on dates and the output. Once the kickoff was over, the team reached out whenever there were questions and promptly executed on the project.

At the end, not only were we given a usability audit score throughout the website, but the team also delivered recommendations based on their own experience and insight. We reviewed this together at the end of the project which has proven to be helpful in the prioritization of our work moving forward. Their deliverable is something we reference often to this day.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We spoke with AJ and Andreaa - both fantastic people and experts in their field and cannot recommend them more. We hope to engage with them in future projects!

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Experiment Zone produced a very thorough usability audit and also a very thorough recommendation/next actions pdf. We now have our baseline usability scores to measure the progress we will make during our site's redesign and also have a carefully crafted recommendation document to help align our priorities as we tackle the work.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The communication and execution was very smooth where it felt like they were an extension of our own team. It would have been easy to forget that they were collaborating with other clients and projects. The amount of detail, attention and care correlated with their top notch communication and workflow.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

The communication from start to finish on scope, what to expect, when to expect it and the delivery was top notch. I never had any doubts on what was going on, if there was any outstanding action items, etc. They really did execute on all the small parts of managing a project that was so often ignored.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

If I am being nitpicky - it would have been nice to have a 30 minute progress report during our project. That said, the schedules likely weren't aligned due to travel and vacations from my side and it wasn't completely necessary. I honestly can't think of any major improvement - Experiment Zone is awesome!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a learning management company with an integrated document management system; I am the Client Relations Manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Experiment Zone?

We hired Experiment Zone to perform a Conversion Audit, so we could determine how clients are navigating through our website; we wanted to improve how often folks request a demo (allowing for more sales!) and to improve each page to provide potential clients with the best experience possible.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Experiment Zone was recommended from a networking group and we found the initial discussion to be professional and right on target with what we needed!

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

The team at Experiment Zone scheduled an initial call and we talked through what we hoped to accomplish; we provided information & gave them access to our website, along with Google Analytics access & within several weeks they were able to come back to us with a very professional presentation which contained analytical information, specific recommendations for improvement, along with tips from viewing competitors' websites.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with two resources:

• Founder
• Conversion Strategist

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We have just begun to implement several of the recommendations from the project, so it's a little too soon to comment on this yet. The quality of our leads is definitely improving. All the recommendations were excellent - we have a lot of work ahead!

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The workflow was excellent! It was relatively easy to book our virtual meetings and folks were very flexible.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their conversion strategist was excellent and provided very comprehensive easy-to-follow recommendations. The comparison with competitors was particularly helpful.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Everything was professional, delivered on time - no, nothing needed to be improved!

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the design director of Designit, a design company. We help companies launch new products, businesses, and services.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Experiment Zone?

We needed help with general UI/UX consultancy for our business.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Experiment Zone did UI/UX consultancy and research for us. We collaborated through G Suite on research plans, which consisted of crafting research questions and an overall learning approach to the investigation. They also created surveys to screen participants and chose the correct candidate. After that, they handled the logistics of scheduling those interview participants and facilitating them to collect the data. Consequently, they synthesized the study results into a keynote document to provide it to our customer.

What is the team composition?

We worked with two researchers from their team.

How did you come to work with Experiment Zone?

I knew AJ (Founder) personally. 

How much have you invested in them?

We spent $10,000–$15,000 with them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from December 2021–February 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

They helped us run at least six studies with five participants each, and that’s a lot in a short period — I consider this a successful partnership. Overall, I’m 100% satisfied with their work, and they’ve exceeded our expectations.

How did Experiment Zone perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management was great; they stuck to our established timelines. In terms of communication, we used emails and phone calls.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They take excellent notes on every call and track their commitments and activities well, making it easy to collaborate with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could optimize the budget and costs of the project by better applying resources to the project. They met our requirements, but I’d like just one person from their team involved with us in the future.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Give them the freedom to determine the approach and help you scope the activity you’re using them for — they’re an excellent team, and their expertise is extremely valuable.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Director of eCommerce at one of the world's leading sound experience companies. Our products and services make it easy to enjoy the music and audio content you love however and wherever you choose.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Experiment Zone?

We initially worked with Experiment Zone at the tail end of calendar 2020, and leverage their UX audit services as an input during our user research phase of a large website redesign.

At the time, we were responding to the shift in demand towards our ecommerce property that had been kickstarted by the pandemic. They helped to inform many of the insights that drove that project, and we recently (Jan 2022) followed up to audit the degree to which we improved upon some of the pain points they identified in the initial audit.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Experiment Zone came from an internal referral. After vetting their approach, we felt that they would be a great supplement to the user research we were doing to inform our site redesign.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Their team met with us upfront to align on their overall approach and to define the top pages and user flows that we wanted them to pay particular attention to. We noted that we wanted to identify short term recommendations that we could productize prior to the upcoming holiday period, in addition to advising on the larger, blue-sky opportunities that might inform our improvements that would be looped into our site redesign.

They took a two-pronged approach:

1. They performed an incredibly thorough and detailed heuristic analysis which pitted key pages of our site against an heuristic checklist;
2. And they also performed a "cognitive walkthrough" in which they walked the site through the lens of discrete personas to identify issues that might be impacting our conversion. The recommendations they identified through this effort gave us a short list of immediate updates we executed for the holiday period, along with countless UX/UI improvements that were rolled into our redesign effort.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Our team worked directly with AJ, the firm's founder. We have since carried out two additional projects with them in which we've continued to work with AJ and an additional analyst.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We were very pleased with the really clear insights that implicated tangible updates we could make to improve conversion. We made many of those updates entering into the holiday period, which was a record year for us. Beyond that, we incorporated many of the long-range opportunities into our redesign planning. We've since delivered that redesign into production and have observed positive conversion rate lifts in association with those updates.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The engagement was very seamless. Because most of the work falls to AJ and her team, we really just aligned on the scope via a kick off call, and then her team performed the analysis and reported the insights back to us in a presentation with two deliverables. We went back to their team with a few exploratory questions beyond that main deliverable, but overall the workflow was really simple in that AJ's team really took on all of the work.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their process is really formulaic. Having gone through it a few times now. I can honestly say that their rigorous approach always turns up opportunities that can drive conversion.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

The team was a pleasure to work with during each of our engagements!