Patcraft:
An evolution of the Digital Experience
"We need a new website."
When the design-centered flooring producer reached out for help, they asked for "a simple redesign."
When I read the brief and started talking to the team, I realized they had a more significant challenge: each member spoke about a different customer. How were we to help them design a site when they couldn't identify who we were building it for?
They needed alignment.
Workshop and research
We started with collaboration and alignment of ambition.
All the Patcraft team members needed to put everything on the table. Goals, fears, aspirations, and even the crazy ideas that no one likes to say out loud. By coaching the team through several in-person workshops, I was able to craft a digital ambition and how to best achieve that ambition by avoiding the pitfalls that drive fear of engaging with big ideas.
"As Patcraft, we are where we are because we listen to our customers."
As deisgners, fabricators, and producers, they take special care in their business to interview, listen, and design for their customers. They don't push the market forward, they respond to the needs of market, and design beautiful solutions to real challenges. I decided to pull that same philosopy to examine not only their website, but the entire customer journey.
Patcraft was so focused on solving the customer challenges they didn't know who the customer was.
Specific, nuanced personas addressed each audience the team had been referencing throughout the immersion.
Collectively, we narrowed it down to four audiences when I brought up that we neglected a key audience for organizational success.
Patcraft's Account Managers.
After identifying the individual personas, the next step was to illuminate the journey they each go on - and where they interact or consider Patcraft.
Four individual journeys were built leveraging customer interviews, desk research, GWI data, and stakeholder interviews.
It was then necessary to bring all of those customers together into a single view, illustrating the different points of intersection, highlighting opportunities for efficient journey evolution, and bringing a sense of alignment to the several teams at Patcraft.
"Together we transform."
Four key challenges were identified:
The Designer is Queen (King).
Even though each department does focus on a different customer, we could align on the primary stakeholder across the journey - the Designer.
Paper notes, SalesForce, MS Access. Yes, and more.
The Marketing team grew through relationships, not technology. As a result, there is a delta between long-term and new agents - there's no holistic view to align.
The site is pretty, but I don't send customers.
No one was able to qualify the purpose of the site - it's not a portfolio. It's not a sales channel. It's not a PR engine. It's there, "because eveyrone has one."
The customer always starts the engagements.
Even with skills and tools at their fingertips, agents were unsure how to engage designers to always be top of mind. There was no reason to engage.
We proposed solving those four challenges across five focus areas, entitling us to solve initiatives concurrently - and allowing for the proper, scaled growth and expansion of the brand with immediate results to show the business the impact, reinforced with a plan for continued growth.
With the focus areas came a roadmap of prioritization of efforts. Focusing on details not just for today but evolution to meet tomorrow, prepared with journey and design experiences that our Designers and all Patcraft Customers will be looking for.
"Yes! Now, let's get started!"
Through an intense design sprint, we built a new design language for the brand, focusing on fine element flourishes that assisted Designers in the location and selection of samples. Designing a fully responsive site allowed for ease of content management and allowed us to fully support customers across all personas accessing the site equally between desktop, mobile, and tablet.
With the launch, we included a new feature called "Designers Workbench," allowing for profile creation, project creation, product refinement, customization, and selection, all built to support the design process of our primary audience instead of forcing them to work in a process that interrupted their flow.
The results
Increase in site stickiness from Designers Workbench registrants.
New Deisgners Workbench registrants in the first 90 days.
Decrease in customer assistance engagement to "find a flooring" on the site.