The Challenge
The global electrical supplier (CES/CEF) was preparing to redesign its eCommerce ecosystem to meet the evolving expectations of both business and individual customers.
While internal teams had assumptions about what users wanted, there was no cohesive or research-backed view of customer needs, behaviors, or expectations to date. There was a need to ensure that the new digital experience would be grounded in real user insights—not just internal perspectives and antecdotes.
Approach
To embed the voice of the customer into the product and design roadmap, I sought to:
- Understand the distinct needs and behaviors of B2B and B2C users
- Identify pain points across the current customer journey
- Benchmark competitors to reveal gaps and opportunities
- Prioritize features, content, and service offerings based on user needs and expectations
A multi-pronged research initiative leveraging both qualitative and quantitative inputs:
- Customer Interviews: Deep, context-rich conversations with both B2B buyers and DIY consumers
- Surveys: Broader validation of emerging themes and quantification of preferences
- Customer Service Roundtables: Surfaced internal insight from frontline support teams
- Google Analytics Review: Identified behavioral trends and friction areas across the digital ecosystem
- Expert Review: Leveraged heuristic principles along with an understanding of the landscape and customers to pinpoint areas of friction in the experience.
- SWOT-Based Competitive Analysis: Evaluated leading competitors and synthesized strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats across digital offerings, logistics, and product search
Outputs
- Personas: Distinct profiles that captured the needs, goals, and pain points of both professional and consumer audiences
- Journey Maps: Mapped the end-to-end customer journey for each persona, highlighting critical moments of truth and drop-off points
- SWOT Summary: A robust competitive view that highlighted where the client lagged behind — and where they could lead
- Feature Prioritization Insights: Clear recommendations tied to user demand and business value
Impact
This foundational research had tangible cross-functional influence:
- Digital & eCommerce roadmap: Findings directly informed the roadmap, ensuring it prioritized real customer pain points; such as streamlining reordering for B2B and improving product findability for B2C
- Logistics & Fulfillment: Research illuminated unmet delivery expectations and gaps in inventory transparency, which prompted cross-departmental conversations and operational changes to fulfillment strategy
- Marketing & Content Strategy: Personas and journey maps became go-to references across teams, helping unify messaging and content priorities around real user needs
- Organizational Alignment: By centralizing customer understanding, this research helped break down silos, creating a shared language and vision for customer-centricity across departments
Reflections
Reflecting back on what would have enhanced this research engagement:
- More longitudinal data: A diary or ethnographic component could have added deeper behavioral context to the snapshots captured
- Increased internal co-creation: Bringing stakeholders into synthesis workshops could have accelerated buy-in and generated more shared ownership of solutions
- Validation efforts: Conduct an advanced survey (e.g., MaxDiff) to quantitatively prioritize improvements uncovered during the primarily qualitative efforts
Photo by Antoni Shkraba Studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/an-outlet-screwdriver-and-a-lightbulb-on-a-wooden-surface-5853952/
Photo by Ivan Samkov: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-man-holding-a-card-while-using-his-laptop-7620568/