Christina Thai

The Problem:

We conducted stakeholder interviews, data analysis and research on their current two websites and found the following:

Brand confusion exists for the magazine when the URL is “winemag.com” and the brand is “Wine Enthusiast”
Wine Enthusiast is not taking advantage of cross-department knowledge and not emphasizing why shopping with them is a unique experience
“Are you a catalog or a magazine?” is a question we hear from customers
Wine Enthusiast has been relying too heavily on trendy delivery apps like Vivino and Drizly for conversion and not so much their own for their known custom wine cellars and coolers.
Navigating through the site is not easy. Too many hidden categories

Stakeholder Questions & Answers:

We ask the Wine Enthusiast team in the marketing, sales, customer relation department, Editors, and Executives some questions that might help shape the new user experience.

Here are some of the key Q&As and findings:

Are there any shift/changes in your industry that may impact the growth of new comers?
Wine Enthusiast has been thought of as just being a print magazine subscription especially amongst the older generation. With the shift in the industry being more digital, they need to be more known as digital publishing leaders and attract the younger crowd.
What can Wine Enthusiast do that no one else can? What is something good you offer that competitors cannot? Please include competitors.
Their direct competitor, Wine Spectator is stuck in their old school ways, Vinepair is a younger wine newbie, and Wine Enthusiast has a more mature and progressive mentality in their content.
What are common problems do users have on the current website?
Search issues, wine ratings navigation, lack of simplicity, personalization of wine recommendations. Both media and commerce need to be taken in consideration equally as both are just as profitable.
How would you describe your customers?
A retailer/restaurant, family wineries, import/distribution companies, and individuals who collect wine.

Competitors

A lot of their big competitors, such as Bon Appetit and Wine Spectator, have already been capitalizing on sales when selling media with their combined specialties on their websites. We need to organize the flow of Wine Enthusiast overall and improve the usability of the ratings and recommendation section as it’s the most valuable part of the site.

Data & Findings

We needed to see how the current site is performing overall and personas. What pages drive the users more? What drives them to go to the commerce website?
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We found that users are having trouble finding buying guide, browse through wine ratings, and search engine, which are the most popular areas of interest.

User Personas

Who are we really designing this website for? After conducting stakeholder interview, we've determined 3 user personas, each with specific needs and pain points that needed to be addressed in the website. I also broke down the users by their attributes, pain points, motivations, goals and responsibilities.

Persona 1: Expert wine drinker
Persona 2: The Intermediate wine connoisseur
Persona 3: A novice wine drinker

Solution

By combining both editorial and commerce sides of the business, their content will help raise brand awareness, grow catalog sales, traffic, and page views. We have conducted a design website discovery to inform the design and feature development, concluding in a full set of wireframes and tested several menu and search navigations prototypes. With that, some of the site improvement include the following:

Adding more personalization to the site, making it more useful for users to study wine more closely and find what they want. For example, taking a quiz so it feels like a sales rep is helping them find the right wine pairing
Creating a seamless journey from learning to buying. Such as linking articles with recommendations that directly takes them to the eCommerce part.