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Editor's Notes

• #2: Going End to End with Lovehoney Lovehoney's approach to optimising for user segments How to use experience maps to build a picture of real users Plotting the pain points and opportunities, using research analysis to form hypotheses and tests Matthew from Lovehoney and freelance UX consultant Jesmond will share their approach to optimising for user segments. They’ll walk through their end-to-end approach: documenting business knowledge and assumptions, using qualitative research to build a user experience map, and using that map to translate opportunities and pain points into hypotheses and tests.
• #4: Who we are Jesmond I have been designing digital interfaces and leading design teams for more than 20 years. I’m a freelance consultant right now. Worked with Matt in 2017 to help paint a picture of Lovehoney’s users for the business
• #5: The problem - people are too busy to have healthy sex lives Couples who use sex toys are 70% more likely to say that they have a fulfilling sex life. We want, completely altruistically, for couples to have better sex lives, though the use of toys.
• #6: First advert Wedding ring - clearcast COnfused for adultery site
• #7: Happy Talk - nicely executed, couples just talking about how great sex toys are and how easy it is to buy them. Note we can’t show sex toys.
• #8: Homepage, very “here’s sex toys”, please buy some
• #9: But people aren’t having this conversation
• #10: So our latest ad is all about having the conversation with your partner about sex toys.
• #11: Ad we built a homepage to match it
• #13: No one considers themselves a beginner Jesmond - are people wanting to see what’s being “hidden” from beginner
• #18: So, the lovely people at Lovehoney have lots of site analytics and user data. They also know that inexperienced customers don’t know what products they want. That’s where I come in: time for some qualitative user research to help understand why their customers behave as they do. Lovehoney staff have loads of knowledge about their customers and products - they really care about everyone finding their perfect product. I started my research by tapping into this brilliant knowledge. I ran an assumptive experience mapping workshop with Lovehoney staff to document their understanding of their customers’ experiences of buying sex toys. I asked them to list all the tasks they assumed customers have as they move from having the idea to get a sex toy, through toy research, and on to purchase and delivery. The product of that workshop is what you see here: UX heaven - a wall of Post-Its embodying an assumptive experience map. Documenting the knowledge held within Lovehoney about their customers’ hopes, fears and needs Armed with this, I was able to start planning the user research. I used the assumptive map to home in on areas of particular interest and potential pain points.
• #19: I broke the workshop into two groups - those thinking about customers new to sex toys. If you consider more experienced customers, you get some of my favourite post-its ever… Unused holes Fucket list Sausage basket - I’m not sure I want to remember what that one was!
• #20: And if you think about customers new to sex toys, the assumption was that these users would have lots of fundamental questions... Is this normal?
• #21: To Lovehoney, sex toys are the most normal thing in the world. So, the first thing we did after the assumptive mapping workshop was to focus the user research on new customers. Subject experts really struggle to understand what it’s like to be new. (Who can know about fucket lists and still remember what it’s like to not know the difference between a vibrator and a dildo…?) It’s true of experts in every field, and it makes primary user research vital to organisations.
• #22: We all know that design gold dust lies in spotting behavioural patterns in users. So, the aim of my qual research was to spot those patterns in buyers new to sex toys. I wanted to present back to the Lovehoney team insights as to the ways newbies approach their first sex toy purchase, their activities, hopes and fears.
• #23: Armed with our assumptive experience map, and our focus on people new to sex toys, we planned our research.
• #24: We started with call centre listening and some digging into Lovehoney’s (hugely busy) forums. Lots of newbies call the call centre and use LiveChat. People respond well to the anonymity of LiveChat in particular. They’re obviously not well represented on the den-of-experts that is the forums, but there were a fair few conversations around how people got started with sex toys that were of interest.
• #25: We then planned hour-long depth interviews with 10 potential Lovehoney customers. In many respects Lovehoney is a classic eCommerce business, with lots of crossover with consumer electronics sales. But would people actually volunteer to talk to us about buying a vibrator? It took me a good couple of weeks to get used to talking about sex toys at work - could we get interviewees to divulge their secrets in less than an hour? Would they be prepared to have the open conversations I needed in order to report useful findings back to Lovehoney? We used a specialist market research and user testing recruiter - People for Research in Bristol. Lovehoney had used them successfully before, so we believed that recruitment would be possible. We asked them to find participants who were: All straight and in a long-term relationship Who had bought their first sex toy in the last 6 months Clearly there are potential new Lovehoney customers outside of straight people in a long-term relationship, but this was the new audience that Lovehoney’s marketing department were particularly interested in. If I was doing this again, I’d allow a bit more time than usual for recruitment, as it turned out to be more difficult to recruit female participants and participants over 35. Who knew that young men would be happier talking about this stuff than others?! Structuring the screener questions so as not to encourage sex toy enthusiasts to lie and say they’re newbies is important, too.
• #26: We had lots of fun running the interviews. I worked with design researcher extraordinaire Dave Ellender. We essentially asked our interviewees to create their own individual experience maps. We asked them about what prompted them to buy a sex toy, how they chose what type of toy to buy, and how they decided on a specific toy. Was it easy to choose the right toy for them? Were they worried about anything? What order did they do things in? For example, do people talk to their partner about sex toys? How do people decide on one type of toy over another? Did they make a decision quickly, or was it something that happened over time? Did they realise anything important after they’d made a purchase? It was important to cover the end-to-end experience, not just that on the website or shop they purchased from. We documented individual triggers and activities on post-its and recorded the order. Towards the end of the interview we asked participants to reflect on their map, ensure it was in the right order, add any omissions and name the stages. We also asked which activities were challenging and whether anything nearly stopped their purchase.
• #27: And we heard loads of interesting stuff... It turns out I was more worried about getting people to talk than they were about talking. Clearly, we didn’t have a representative sample of the population - we had people who’d signed up for paid research into sex toys. And the younger our participants were, the more blase they were about discussing sex toys. In fact, in very good news for Lovehoney’s customer base, the 20-somethings we spoke to were incredibly used to being open about sex toy use. They said that they were happy to talk about it with peers and flatmates. The only people they didn’t want to know about it were their mums.
• #28: We analysed the individual experience maps, and transferred them to a master map, looking for repeated patterns and interesting differences.
• #29: I was able to report back lots of interesting findings to Lovehoney. For example as suspected, sexy lingerie and popular media are ‘gateway drugs’ to sex toy purchases. Also, a really common behaviour was for users to start research with known products, but to explore the more exotic options before coming back to more familiar territory.
• #30: New stage we didn’t anticipate in our assumptive mapping. We did flag “getting permission” as an activity. But the research showed it as so important, and so common to our participants, as to deserve it’s own phase. Earlier quantitative research implies that some people never get past this stage. This phase is largely offline. Comedy - can laugh off the idea if not reciprocated
• #31: We found two factors that made the biggest differences to user behaviour: If the couple were working jointly to choose a toy, rather than if one person worked alone to choose a toy as a gift If the couple were looking to make their sex life more fun, rather than if they had a sexual problem to solve Which equated to two user groups we had good evidence for, and called them ‘fun couples’ and ‘gifters’. (We didn’t speak to enough people wanting to solve a sexual problem to be confident about findings around them. It would be an interesting area for further research.) The ‘fun couples’ really did report having lots of fun - choosing a toy together was a funny, sexy, relationship-building experience for them.
• #32: Buying sex toys as presents came up in our assumptive experience map, but we were able to identify some interesting newbie gifter behaviour with the research. They are solo decision-makers who want to make their sex life more fun In order to feel like they have “permission” to go ahead and secretly buy a gift, they need to know what type of toy might be acceptable to their partner They were anxious they might make a poor choice and cause a problem in their relationship But don’t want to spend too much time examining all the options I found the anxiety aspect of this fascinating. We heard that the Fun Couples were having a great time choosing a toy together. But the gifters put themselves in the situation of having to make a confusing purchase alone, and they suffered for it.
• #33: Here’s some of the experience map we produced. I got it printed out large so that Lovehoney people could refer to it over time. I had a fun conversation with the print shop about NSFW content before I sent it over...
• #34: It shows: our user groups and their common behaviours and journeys. Here, our Gifters are very keen to ensure that their purchase looks “classy” and “not too scary”, whilst keeping spending down, to avoid wasting too much money on a potentially unwanted gift
• #35: So we know that this is a very emotional and anxiety-ridden journey for our visitors.
• #36: Note - how a subtle navigational change can increase conversion
• #37: People would scan through reviews that mention how suitable it was for that person, so we pulled this information out and placed it by the CTA
• #38: We also tried testing our Sex Toys page - with our variant. People reach this page by typing sex toys into google, at a cost per click of £1.25, that is quite expensive. A brand click (for “lovehoney”) normally costs us 8p. Features of this page - a section of top first time products, some good better best merchandising, and pullquotes recommending certain products.
• #39: Results 8% increase in conv £1 increase in AOV OK, but not great - why?
• #41: All the behaviour on this page, indicate a majority of the audience were male, and buying for themselves.
• #42: It’s not the people we knew about - it’s not hetero couples. Straight Men shopping for themselves by typing “sex toys” into google.
• #43: Browsing Not sure what to pick - don’t know the words. Didn’t even type “male sex toys” into google. Easily distracted by the weird stuff
• #46: https://www.lovehoney.co.uk/vibebot/