TL ; DR
BIKE24 is by far one of the biggest retailers in the cycling industry in Europe. By the end of 2021 the number of times they have interviewed customers or done any type of UX research was 0.
I was hired to build a product design team as well as to design solutions that delight our customers and improve business results. That was not possible if no UX research practices were established. So this was my first big project - establish the discovery platform at BIKE24.
...
3 months later We have already interviewed over 60 customers, we have noted down more than 20 usability problems, 5 new feature opportunities, 3 new business opportunities and we have built 3 detail-rich personas and their customer journeys.
By the end of 2024 Continuous discovery is part of our daily work. We have run over hundreds of moderated and unmoderated sessions - both generative and evaluative - and over 30 AB tests. Discovered even more usability problems, features and business opportunities. As a result we have generated more than 20% increase in revenue and de-risked significantly multiple large re-design concepts.
See how we set up and scaled our research operations!
Key challenges
- Lack of complete buy-in from all stakeholders.
- Lack of tools and processes for recruiting and conducting any type of UX research
- Lack of place, tools and techniques for documenting, storing and analysis of research insights.
- Lack of experienced researchers and advocates.
Our approach
Create demand for user research by selecting a research project that is very important for many people in the company and then overdeliver and overshare!
- Find a big research project important for many stakeholders to get buy-in
- Assess current processes and available tools
- Find a way to build the research ops foundations
- Do the project and show awesome results to all stakeholders
- Document insights and make them available to everyone
- Iterate, streamline and advocate
1/6
Find a big research project and get buy-in
Hug problem for many teams: lack of reliable personas and customer journeys
I realised that there is one big problem for almost all teams - there wasn't any type of description of our customers - in other words personas. By that time BIKE24 had already few personas prepared but the problem was they were prepared by external agencies which did not have direct contact with our customers. They based the personas only on participants who they recruited from different channels and not actual BIKE24 customers. Therefore, those personas did not really represent our customers and did not reflect their needs and pains. Once this was made known all the stakeholders were extremely interested in personas that reflect our actual customers. So, me and my team not only had the buy-in but we had the attention now of many teams.
2/6
Assess current processes and tools
Big problem: no tools available
I then conducted an internal audit to understand the current product, the available tools as well as possible access to our customers. Well, the main problem here was that there were absolutely no tools available specifically designed for user research. Buying them was at that point not really an option due to legal considerations and budget. On top of that access to our customers was very limited due to data privacy. Needless to say there were lots of discussions here with our legal team. But in the end we found a solution!
3/6
Find a way to build the research ops foundations
Solution: adapt the remote work tools for qual research
We at BIKE24 work entirely remotely. And therefore our whole internal toolstack is aimed at facilitating online communication. With a little creative thinking we managed to turn our day to day tools into the perfect tools for user research. For example MS Teams for video calls and recordings, MS Bookings + outlook for bookings, Miro for documenting insights and Emarsys for audience segmentation and sending invites. With that in our first round we managed to do over 30 customer interviews only in first 2 weeks.
4/6
Do the project and show awesome results to all stakeholders
Exceeding expectations: most detailed and accurate description of customers BIKE24 has even had.
We managed to interview over 60 of our most frequent customers within 3 weeks, to analyse the information and to extract most common insights. As a result we managed to create such information-rich personas that to this day they are used in almost every level of the company including in many important high-level strategic decisions.
5/6
Document insights and make them available to everyone
From Miro to Confluence. Our research repo is born.
Initially we used excel and Miro to collect and analyse the insights but later we found big demand for the information to be available to everyone. Therefore, we have moved it to our company Confluence. Which we later on developed into a proper research repository.
6/6
Iterate, streamline and advocate
Usability tests, card sorting, AB testing, and many more followed.
Lots of the assets we produced for this first project and the processes we have set up are to this day used as templates and blueprints. On top of that throughout the years we managed to streamline the UX research by adding more templates and tools. Nowadays, you can run any type of research study or AB test within a matter of hours and you can easily find learnings from past studies including a curated list of all the customer problems ranked by severity. Awesome, eh?
Results
3 months later We have already interviewed over 60 customers, we have noted down more than 20 usability problems, 5 new feature opportunities, 3 new business opportunities and we have built 3 detail-rich personas and their customer journeys.
By the end of 2024 Continuous discovery is part of our daily work. We have run over hundreds of moderated and unmoderated sessions - both generative and evaluative - and over 30 AB tests. Discovered even more usability problems, features and business opportunities. As a result we have generated more than 20% increase in revenue and de-risked significantly multiple large re-design concepts.
By establishing a robust user research practice, me and the rest of the product unit transformed BIKE24 from a company designing in the dark to one truly in tune with its users' needs.
Kudos
I am extremely proud to say that I led this project from the start but also want to give credit for the huge help to the head of product, the extremely talented product designers in my team and the extremely helpful product managers and marketers who were involved. Couldn't have done it without all of you! And special special thanks for the support of our head of product Christian without whose support this would have never happen.
