@Oluwatobi wrote:
Sequel to the tweet from the former C.E.O of Konga.com, Sim Shagaya. I woke up to a link to Konga’s new project daily.konga.com. I was particularly interested to find out how their model works.
For a service of such, I would expect that I can shop for 95% of my groceries on the platform, and also a reasonable delivery fee. The delivery timing as indicated on their website is within 24 hours, which is quite okay for me. I would also love to know the thoughts that went into their choice of name though? Konga Daily?? Perhaps the USP is centered around same-day-delivery, well time will tell.
The Design Decisions
On the present Konga.com homepage, there are two tabs at the top left [Konga.com] and [Konga Daily], while this does not particularly work for me, I’m gonna let it pass. Then I clicked on the [Konga Daily] tab which directed me to the URL daily.konga.com. I didn’t understand what was going on, is this a Launched Product? Work in Progress? a Beta? a Pre-Beta? or Anywhere Belle Face?
The Dialog Boxes
The first issue I encountered was with the confirmation dialog boxes. I added a Geisha Mackerel & Tomatoes Sauce— 155g to my cart, and a dialog box pops up, asking me if I want to go back to store or Check out.
On adding, a CWAY Nutri Milk Drink Pear- 520ml, I also encountered the same confirmation dialog box. This appears to me as an interruptive use of the “Confirmation System”.
Let’s take it to a real life scenario, imagine being asked by the attendants at SHOPRITE “Are you sure you want to buy this” each time you pick an item from their shelf, I mean each item.
Confirmations, dialog boxes, pop-ups, overlays or whatever aren’t always needed because they can actually increase mistakes. One should be selective of the instances to present a user with these boxes, since bombarding a user with confirmations for every action, eventually makes them disregard it. It is not enough that the dialog box in itself was poorly designed, having to repeatedly display this on my screen for actions that do not warrant it, couldn’t be more annoying. Nick Babich of babich.biz does a good job of stating out 5 essential UX rules for dialog design.
The Shopping Page Real Estate
I proceeded to check out one of the categories http://daily.konga.com/fresh-food and the UI kept crying for help. This to me, is not a justifiable use of the page’s real estate. Why do I need my cart fixed on the right side, without an option to close it, when at that point “I am still shopping”.
I mean this is a shopping stage, it might make sense to think this will reduce the user journey, by having to shop and decide on both screens, but that decision being made on your behalf, without an option for you to “un-want it”, does not only violate one of the factors of Heurestic Analysis — User control and freedom, it also doesn’t appear to me that users will recognize this design system rather than recall it. This cart also suffers from the similar design problem I recently wrote about for SupermartNG which generated a lot of design discussions on Radar by TechCabal. A lot is wrong with the interactivity on that cart, but that might just be a story for another day.
The Mobile View
I finally decided to access the Konga Daily website on my mobile phone, and guess what I found, Mobile First? Mobile Last? Nope, it was Mobile NO.
Harmattan has carried our navigation bar away, it’s nowhere to be found. I actually didn’t have time to inspect element on that page, but trust me Harmattan has carried our navigation away. I mean the whole of it.
On clicking the search bar, it expands into the rare ends of the phone screen, pushing the Search button almost outside the screen.
The product images are extremely tiny, I need to order a magnifying glass on Konga.com to be able to view product images on daily.konga.com, good marketing strategy but not good enough if I don’t have any other reason to order a magnifying glass in the first place.
If we have these image sizes on a mobile phone, I can’t wait to see what we’ll have on an Android Watch or iWatch with obviously smaller viewports. Maybe just a dot, Maybe nothing, who will help check for us?
Where is the product name? I can only see the prices of products and very big Call To Actions, requesting me to add to cart products whose images I can barely see. The CTA’s in themselves need a whole lot of work. The padding is off, line height is off, the button itself is a disaster, the only right thing about these “ADD TO CART” buttons is the spelling of “ADD TO CART” itself, but seriously these buttons need more work, the spacing, the layout.
Content Strategy
Can we also do away with the “Popular Category”? Not only are they serving out of context on that page, they actually aren’t necessary until we do have “Popular Categories” based on data.
The content under the hangline “Buy Groceries Online” is way too much, it makes me feel like I’m on a blog.
This should be reduced to capture the main USP’s in about 5–6 sentences. Users are here to shop, and boring them with long texts of how cocoa pops and rice krispies are very important for breakfast, seems off from their intentions. If there is a need to actually have this content on that page, it could be segmented, leveraging on drop-downs.
The newsletter subscription box should not be hidden. Leaving it open reduces the number of steps of subscribing from 2 to 1.
Final Thoughts
One good thing about design is the opportunity it offers for iteration. User research is one aspect of UX design that brands need to invest heavily on, and consequently design with empathy for them, it is not enough that a product is useful, it has to remain usable. User-centered design in itself solves a lot of problems outside design, when done right. I already discussed in an earlier post the role of good UX design in effective customer service.
Twitter: @OluwatobiMayowa
Medium: Oluwatobi Mayowa
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