Understanding the Business

3.2 Understanding the Business

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Number one is understanding the business. In order to create a proper UX design for a particular business the first and the foremost things that one needs to understand is the business itself, if you don’t know the business you will not be able to move on and create aspects of that particular business. So one needs to understand the goals, ambitions, ideologies, vision, mission, features of that particular business.

Some of the main questions that one needs to understand well the first one is what kind of business it is? What is the offering? Is the business offering a particular product or a service or an interaction.

It varies from business to business. For example, let’s again take the example of an online ice-cream delivery store in that case it is an online e-commerce business selling food items in which case in this particular case different types of ice creams.

Next, what are the primary goals of the business? So every business will have different types of goals. Some might want more customers, some businesses might want more sales, some businesses might want to expand the customer base, or might want to expand geographically so it is important for UX designers to actually understand the primary goals of that particular business. So let’s again take the example of an online ice-cream delivery store. The primary goal of the online ice-cream delivery store, let's say, is to sell as many flavours as possible in the beginning.

Next, what is the immediate and the long term vision of the business? This is something you need to speak to the slightly higher level employees, probably the founders of the business to understand. If I take again the example of an online ice-cream delivery store then probably the immediate vision of the business would be to sell as many ice-creams as possible but the later vision would be say number one add the number of flavours, add more combos, add more options depending on the customer feedback.

Next, what are the company plans for strategic growth? So, Some of the strategic growth you know one actually thinks about is adding new locations, investing in customer acquisitions, probably franchising opportunities so it depends on that particular business, the product that particular business is selling and capabilities of that particular product.

So let’s say for an online ice cream delivery store the primary line of strategic growth would be more acquisition so that you have more of that particular ice cream delivery store in other parts of the country.

Next, how are our offerings different and how are our offerings currently positioned in the market? This is something you can only understand by talking to the higher level employees and the founders of that particular business. In my case for an online ice-cream delivery store well presently this particular store does have an offline space and hence they already have a set of customers actually coming to that store and ordering ice-creams.

Lastly, what are the main categories of the products? In, let’s say our example of online ice-cream delivery store the main categories of products would be the different flavours of ice cream and how those ice-creams are being sold. So if you remember I said a customer can order for one scoop, a customer can also order for two different scoops but then the two different scoops can have two different types of flavours and lastly our customer can actually order for family pack which is 500 grams, so these all comes under the different categories of the product.

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In this section we are actually going to do a SWOT analysis of the company which I have mentioned earlier, remember the online ice-cream delivery store, so let’s go ahead and do a SWOT analysis of that particular brand. So the first thing which we are going to do is we are going to look at strengths, well,  the strengths would be quite a few of the first things are multiple unique ice-cream flavours, existing customer for the brand which would definitely contribute to the online sales of the brand as well, the existing trust of those customers are very very critical. The last one is of course the location of the ice-cream store, the better the location of the store the better it is or easier it is for that particular store to deliver to nearby locations.

The next one is looking at the weakness, well since it is ice-cream there are quite a few weakness that I could think of, so the first thing is limited stock, perishable food item it is of ice-cream of course it would be perishable, maintenance of standard and quality, maintenance of online delivery especially for a new company to maintain, ah to do all the deliveries at the right time becomes a little difficult.

Higher than average pricing that is also because, the last point, you know the ice cream shop would know have to maintain a delivery team also if you remember these ice-creams are all naturally flavoured ice-creams, they are all natural ice-creams so the cost of these particular ice-cream is slightly more than that of their competitors in the market.

The next point looking at you is opportunities. Well the opportunity the first opportunity would be to include more flavours in the future, to include custom made ice-cream which is something that a lot of people like in today’s day and age, to create multiple baskets and sell combo sets, attracting gifting options as well.

The last one is something that of course we are extremely health conscious today so selling healthy options like a range of sugar free ice-creams. How do you get to know about these opportunities? You speak to the brand, you speak to the owners, you speak to the founders, and then you know their vision and you take their vision down and put it in this particular chart.

The last one, are your threat analysis, the first thing you can absolutely I am sure you have already thought about is the strong competition from bigger outlets. Now bigger outlets can be selling just ice-cream or bigger outlets can be your big companies like swiggy, zomato, ubereats who deliver foods on a regular basis, companies like these are always highly dependent on customer reviews, a negative review can actually ruin chances for survival of these particular companies especially when they are starting out.

The last one is the lack of enthusiasm among some customers to try out new things or order ice cream online, now a lot of people might think how can ice-cream be delivered? It is cold and needs to be consumed when it is frozen, how would you deliver that? Well there are always solutions for these sorts of problems but it is important to acknowledge and record these problems as well.

The next step is to actually look at what your competitors are doing? It is important to see what is happening in the industry so you need to see what your direct competitors and indirect competitors are up to. So first is to understand the goals of your competitor analysis. What are you trying to achieve through this particular analysis, if you don’t set your goals you are not going to be able to access other competitors based on your needs and goals.

(10:00)

Second you need to make a list of your direct and indirect competitors, a good idea would be to have 5 to 10 competitors in each category. Third…, the third step is of course the most important and most critical step in the third step you visit your competitors website, app, any other platform and actually asses their website, actually see the kinds of buttons they have used, the kinds of communication they have used, the kind of… design philosophy that they are following, what are their products like? How are they actually selling their products? What kind of a tone are their communications structured in? Understanding all these things is really really important.

Fourth, of course you record your findings and you spot similarities and differences, it is important to see similarities and the differences at the same time, you also need to ask yourself why are there certain differences? Why are there certain things that are not probably there in your competitors website? If your competitor is not doing something there might be some reason for that, so let’s go ahead and actually do a competitor analysis of the online ice-cream store.

We are going to use this sort of template and in next slide we are actually going to fill in under each subheading, Well so let’s look at a particular competitor which is also selling ice-creams and selling ice-creams in the online medium as well, well let’s get on with it, in this competitor analysis we are going to look at another online ice-cream delivery store just that it is existing in another city.

So in the type I would write direct, in the name let’s give… a dummy name… as of now, let’s call it X. Y.Z. Ice-cream. Let’s have the website www.xyzice-cream.com, in terms of the target audience let’s add have a target audience so I would write as 18 to… 25 years… as the first target audience and the next one would be 26 to… 40… years, you are of course free to change the target audience when you do it for your competitor analysis, in terms of location let’s give the location as new Delhi, where in the USP let’s have natural ice-cream…and……different flavour combos…. of course you are free to change these attributes depending on your kind of competitor analysis that you are working with.

So let’s see some of the similar features, shall we?

The similar feature that I can think of first is natural flavours…gift combos…in terms of differences what are the differences I would definitely write different city, I would definitely give larger offline store(5 seconds gap for typing) lesser.. options…in terms of similarity we also have …family packs…well in terms of the drawbacks well (6 second gap for typing) let’s say…..lesser payment options…next another drawback is lesser options in terms of family packs (8 seconds gap for typing) well just like you can actually create a proper competitor analysis of course the data that I entered just now… is something that I made up because of this video when you make a competitor analysis you are going to actually look at a real company…. and your data would be absolutely real.

Finally we come to the discussion time, click on the discussion button below and connect to fellow learners. I am really curious to hear your take on UX design and research. It is also important for you to learn and understand what others have to say about UX design and research.

(video duration- 17 minutes 14 seconds)