Online Car Purchase

UI Design

User Research

Double Diamond Process

Myself and my team took part in a project with online car dealership, Lookers.

Our goal was to redesign the purchase journey for the company, as part of a larger sales transformation. We were trying to streamline this journey, ultimately resulting in more online car sales.

There was an awareness for Lookers to improve this user journey in order to compete with online car sales companies like Kazoo and Cinch.

The result of this piece of work was an improved and user validated design, in turn reducing the reliance on in person dealerships.

I worked on this project as a UX designer and collaborated with my design team on the UX process, usability testing and UI designs.

Research and Understanding

Conducted user interviews and surveys to understand the current pain points in the purchase journey.

Analysed competitor platforms (Kazoo, Cinch) to identify strengths and weaknesses.

Gathered insights from Lookers’ sales data and user feedback.

Initial Findings

Identified that users hesitated to complete purchases online due to a lack of trust and clarity in the process.

Noted a preference for in-person interactions among certain customer segments.

Problem Definition

Competitors focus on providing a seamless, transparent, and trustworthy user experience, which is crucial for building confidence in online car purchases.

Clearly defined the key challenges: users' reluctance to purchase online, confusion over the buying process, and the need for a seamless and trustworthy online experience.

Goal Create a purchase journey that explains each process,

increasing the conversion rate of sales, reservations and

test drives.

Persona DevelopmentDeveloped personas to represent the following user types:

Ideation and Prototyping

Usability Testing

Key Usability Testing Findings

Participants were unsure about the outcomes of call to action buttons on the car landing page, such as 'buy now' or 'reserve for 99GBP'.

4/7 participants were reluctant to book test drives due to account creation requirements.

Confusion around the purpose and process of paying a 99GBP reservation fee.

Final Design Adjustments (Post Usability Testing)

Book a Test Drive

Clarified the need for account creation when booking test drives to address user concerns.

We ensured to adjust the content of this page to clearly explain why the user needs to make an account in order to book a test drive.

“Get test drive ready” & “Help us to prepare getting you on the road safely”

Reserve car for 99GBP

All participants had worries about the 3 days reservation and were unsure as to why they needed to book an appointment.

The reservation page did not do much to inform users about the purpose of this fee and how it worked.

The updated design contains clearer language on this page before the users pay the reservation fee. Now, there are sections to learn more about this process, as well as the 'how does it work' area.

The impact of this piece of work meant that the purchase journey underwent a design process aided by user research and iterations. With this, the new journey addresses the initial goals of the project which were:

Understand the reluctance to purchase a car online and aid the user along the process, providing them with options such as enquire, book a test drive and reserve for 99GBP.

Although the end of this project occurred at development handover, the key metrics that we advised the client to keep track of were:

User drop off

Form/validation drop off (are there certain form fields that users are dropping off from?)

Conversion rate (monitor the rate of purchases, test drive bookings, account creations and reservations).

The reflections I have towards the project are mostly positive. I was happy to have flexed different skillsets such as design system maintenance, and quickly adjusting to a complicated prototype to facilitate high quality usability testing.

As a team, we realised that we could have explained in greater detail how we conduct research and its value to the client. This realisation came about after some client teams were confused as to why users would not opt in to marketing. We did take care to walk them through our research methods and conclusion, but recognise that in the future we should showcase our research plans to a wider client audience.