Uniqlo, the clothing store
that you and I know about.
Redesign of the app that not many knew about.
“Welcome to Uniqlo!”
Uniqlo, the fast fashion retail store from Japan has probably found its place at the back of the heads of many. Along with its massive expansions all over the world, it seems as tho they’re all set for world domination. Or so it seems, for a brand that has been making clothes for ‘for every day and everyone’ Uniqlo has been seen to position itself from a position of caring for the masses. Unfortunately, in their great crusade to provide these apparels to the world, they fell short in their Singaporean app.
The Uniqlo experience
With more than 1920 stores worldwide spanning over more than 15 different countries. The crusade to provide high-quality, innovative, functional and affordable clothing for everyone, every day seems to be on the right trajectory. With more than 28 stores opened in Singapore within a short span of 10 years since 2008, it’s no surprise why Singapore has been chosen for Uniqlo’s first e-commerce service launch in the South East Asia market.
In their press release, it was mentioned that the “expansion serves to bring the UNIQLO experience close to consumers, while also reinforcing the brand’s reputation as the leader in both the brick-and-mortar and online retail spaces.” at the same time “to bring increased convenience to local customers with our interactive online experience.” A tremendous and big vision but nothing less expected from a giant like UNIQLO.
Unfortunately, there seems to be almost zero hype or buzz about the projected online experience and said dominance. Thus, we decided to look into the app for a considered possible redesign.
First impressions
Getting started with the redesign of the Uniqlo app, we dived into people’s responses and take on the app. This was done through readings of the app reviews, initial user enquiry (allowing users to interact with the app) and of course we had a go at it ourselves as a team.
Unfortunately, apart from the appalling reviews on the app store, many users that were interviewed were left confused and speechless that the app was actually from Uniqlo(not in a good way). “I expected much more from Uniqlo, I’m disappointed”, commented one of our users. To our horror, we soon realised that the app was serving as a launcher for their online store’s website and not a native app. This helped join the dots as to why the experience of the mobile app was such a bad one. Users were going through an experience built for the web instead of an app.
Unfolding more
Delving deeper, we conducted user interviews with people who shop at Uniqlo regularly and also people who have used the Uniqlo App as part of our contextual enquiry, for a varied demographic response.
Aiding that we conducted an online survey that had 113 respondents.
Most common age group being 30-39 range
Most common relationship status, married(with kids)
In-store shopping was the most common channel
Only 10% of the respondents used the app
Understanding from the data collected, it was clear that when it came to purchasing Uniqlo products, in-store shopping was the main channel for most compared to online shopping. Along with that, we could also see how many had no idea of the existence of the app. Even if they did, they were not fully utilising it.
Personas
Next, we crafted three personas and the respective customer journey maps. Which helped identify potential gaps that could be turned into opportunities that the app could address. We were then able to ideate on possible solutions based on the structure that was the compilation of the opportunities and pain points of the various personas.
With the persona of Julia Chen being our main target persona.
Michael Ong, 39
Married father of three
Full-time businessman
Julia Chen, 36
Married mother of two
Full-time marketing manager
Tristan Low, 28
In a serious relationship
Full-time investment banker
To design the best UX, pay attention to what users do, not what they say.
- Jakob Nielsen
Hopeful and excited about the possibilities of the app how it would help reshape the current relevance of the app to customers. We didn’t want to be too over our heads. Hence, we decided to conduct field observations in various Uniqlo stores, to understand the current in-store shopping patterns of customers. In doing so, we were hoping that collected results could help us understand why customers are preferring to shopping in-store as well as discovering other opportunities that the app could offer.
Our observations covered mainly how people browsed the store, the frustrations they encounter and how parents with children shopped.
Some of the key observations included; customers facing to some levels of frustrations when checking the shelves/ racks for available sizes, fitting room limitations of 4 items for parents and the checking out of mannequins for outfit combinations.
Also, we observed how a parent’s purchasing decision was more often than not shaped to a certain extent on the time he had to spend browsing particular sections which are dependant on the amount of attention he had to pay to his children. In the case observed, the father was seen skipping sections due to his sons running around the store.
Essentially,
Uniqlo’s current in-app shopping experience is disappointing and overshadowed by the significantly larger store presence.
Additionally,
the app does not address existing problems faced by customers in-store but instead is creating even more frustrations for them.
Therefore,
The app should instead enhance both the in-store and in-app shopping experience.
Allowing customers to shop seamlessly through both pathways, thus boosting sales, customer satisfaction and brand image.
“If you can beat it, join it”
Taking bearings from our insights and findings, we realised the essential parts of the app was not going to be just the online store, but also the in-store assistant that would aid the strong in-store shopping presence. As the saying goes, “if you can’t beat it, join it.”
In line with aiding the in-store shopping experience, we decided to include features like body fit, product availability and outfit suggestions that would help with the frustrations customers faced and expedite purchase decisions. With that, we were able to create our prototype for usability testing.
Usability test
Upon finishing the mid-fi prototype, we decided to take it for a usability test.
And where better to test the app than the UNIQLO store itself and with customers who are shopping there.
Feedback from usability test
The assistant button in the footer was not intuitive and ambiguous. Users were confused as to what context they were using the app in.
All users mentioned that the Try In-store function is irrelevant as they would not move from online shopping to offline shopping. Rather, offline to online is a much common pathway
Users liked the “$XX to free delivery” feature but wanted an immediate way to ass more items to their cart instead of having to leave the page
The above feedback were worked on as well as with other minor tweaks and adjustments for the following iteration.
Next steps
Stronger differentiation of the app’s dual function
Improve the Scan to win experience and publicity
Introduce a “Grab & Go” purchase method