HKTVmall App — A UX Case Study
Disclaimer: This fictitious project is done by me, Joanne Yang, and my classmate, Hon Man Leung, for a UX design course and it is not affiliated with HKTVmall.
Introduction
HKTVmall is a popular e-commerce platform founded by Ricky Wong in 2015 which mainly serves Hong Kong people. Often referred to as “The Amazon of Hong Kong”, it is home to over 4,200 retailers and visitors will be able to find almost everything ranging from imported chicken wings to the latest video game consoles on this platform.
Every day, 250,000 people in Hong Kong visit HKTVmall via the website or app. Recently, the pandemic of COVID-19 has given this over-the-top market an extra boost, enabling sales to double in 2020 to HK$2.88 billion on a net profit of HK$183.6 million.
It is highly likely that the pandemic will change the way Hong Kongers shop permanently, for that we see the huge benefits an excellent online shopping experience will do to the society. Therefore in this case study, we are dedicated to finding out ways that HKTVmall can improve on their user experience preceded by identifying the problems that the users encounter now.
Research
To start off our research, we have studied other similar platforms that serve as the main competitors of HKTVmall. Our scope of study includes their user interfaces, user flows, information architecture and special features.
From there we have hypothesized some potential user pain points and thus the five research questions are derived as below:
- What is the first thing that the users identify when opening the app?
- Will the users browse the app even when they do not intend to buy anything?
- Are users affected by the pop-up advertisements in the app?
- Are users satisfied with the current information architecture?
- How do they feel about the user flow of purchasing products?
These five research questions will help us develop insights about the user problems of the HKTVmall app. Both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies would be utilized throughout the research process. Our goal is to arrive at an actionable problem statement based on these research questions.
User Reviews
We have dug through the user reviews of the app on the Apple store. The reviews related to the user experience of the app could mainly be grouped into these four categories:
1. Searching for Products
2. Feature-related
3. Ad-related
4. Application Bugs
User Survey
In response to our five research questions, we have designed a questionnaire asking the users about their experience using the HKTVmall app. The questionnaire was distributed to 32 people who all have the experience of using the app. Some valuable findings were found from this quantitative research:
1. 50% of the respondents reported that the first thing which they identified using the app is the pop-up advertisement but at the same time, 53.1% of them think that fewer pop-up advertisements would improve their experience with the app.
2. All respondents rarely or only sometimes use the app with an intention to make a purchase.
3. When asked to rate the overall navigation easiness of the app on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the easiest, only 18.8% respondents rated 4 or above. However at the same time, almost 97% of them expressed that they had a neutral/ positive experience with the app.
These patterns were further explored in our user interviews.
User Interviews and Usability Tests
We have interviewed 10 users and also conducted a usability test with them (we asked them to buy a certain product using the app) to get an in-depth understanding of the behaviours and attitudes of the users towards the app.
From the interviews and usability tests, some patterns have been identified:
The users compare prices within the platform, across different platforms and with other offline stores. According to the interviewees, the HKTVmall app sells products at a slightly higher price, but they use the app because it offers a convenient online shopping experience and a wide range of products to select from.
Most of them have expressed their annoyance towards the pop-up ads. We’d like to highlight one quote from one of our interviewees which pretty much sums this complaint up:
Some of the users still had their attention caught by the promotional banners on the landing page and clicked on them which might be a more effective way of advertising.
When we asked them about their first impression of the app, they told us that they think that the landing page is too overloaded with advertisements and unnecessary information.
For the user interface, some of them have expressed that the fonts and icons could be made larger and hence more identifiable. Another worth-noted point is that the main categories are placed below the sub-categories. Two of the interviewees have expressed that the design is not intuitive enough because we usually read things from top to bottom provided by our cultural context. Also, the cart wasn’t placed at the top of the app. Our interviewees have found these points peculiar which is attributed to the fact that the UI of this app is pretty different from the other e-commerce apps.
The information architecture has room for improvement. Categories are not that well-sorted which confuses the users. For instance, when an interviewee was searching for dog food, he was confused whether he should look into the supermarket or pet sections.
Further on the searching for products, the interviewees have expressed the difficulty in finding the products they want from the keyword search. The options suggested by the app might sometimes be unrelated to the products that the users wanna purchase. This part will be further investigated in the insights section.
Pain Points
To quickly summarise our findings, the following user pain points are found from our research:
- Pop-up advertisements are mandatory and irrelevant for most of the time, leaving the users annoyed.
- The app has a category suggestion function when using the keyword search for products but the categories appear to be arbitrary to users.
- The UI is messy by having too much information on one page and it is also unintuitive for the users.
Insights
From there, 2 insights are developed.
First, the improvement on the keyword search feature needs to be prioritized. While it might be obvious that the user interface of the app or the information architecture also need to be improved, we think that these problems are not as crucial as the keyword search feature. The reason is that the users are currently using this feature a lot more than the categories of products.
From the surveys, it was found that most of the users do not use the app with the intention to buy something. Originally we thought that it meant that most users would do window shopping with the app but after the user interviews, we found that although users do use the app to browse casually, they often have specific things they are interested in mind already.
For instance, an interviewee already knows she needs to buy “chicken wings” and search directly using the keyword search feature. The app has an in-built algorithm to predict the five possible categories that the keyword might belong to (as shown in the middle picture). Irrelevant and seemingly arbitrary categories like Alcoholic Beverages would show up, leading the user to click into irrelevant results and be left confused. Though the user interface and information architecture are problematic, a lot of users simply just do not care about these two that much since they skip right into the search function. Hence, solving the user problems regarding the keyword search should be prioritized.
For the second insight, it is essential to make the advertisements more user-centered instead of sales-centered. Almost all interviewees felt annoyed by the pop-up advertisement and the overloaded landing page with an unusually large number of advertisements.
The Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) does not increase because the advertisements are not catered for the users. The pop-up advertisements throughout the user journey could be done in a way similar to how they send personalised notifications which make them feel that their needs are fulfilled.
It is understandable from the business/ sales point of view to have as many advertisements as possible on a page. But if the users find it too irrelevant or even overwhelming, it basically kills the purpose of advertising. Focusing on sales instead of users might provide short-term profit, but it harms the long-term development. Right now consumers are clinging onto it due to brand loyalty since it is the only sizeable e-commerce platform based in Hong Kong which has induced a bond with local consumers. What if another platform enters the market without these issues? It might eventually beat the brand loyalty and cause them to abandon the HKTVmall.
Conclusion
As Hong Kongers ourselves, it would be sad to see Hong Kong’s Amazon fail, therefore an actionable problem statement has been derived from this research: how might we improve on the category suggestion of the keyword search feature in HKTVmall for consumers?
With all the problems that the HKTVmall app has, we consider solving the issue with the keyword search function the most urgent since it is currently the workaround for consumers to navigate through the app without having to deal with the messy user interface and categorization. We suggest working on the category suggestion of the keyword search function first. We do not suggest dealing with the sorting and filtering functions in the keyword search as it is related to the information architecture and it would be resolved automatically when that is restructured.
Thanks for reading. Please feel free to leave your valuable feedback as learning is the main goal of this project!
References:
Forbes — The making of Hong Kong’s Largest Online Landlord:HKTV
