Guiding the purchase journey for gear-loving musicians

The user problem:

Music gear is a major investment for experienced musicians who know exactly what specs they are looking for; less experienced novices aren’t sure what to ask or look for to make the right decision.

The business challenge:

We knew we had a lot of interested buyer users looking to make a purchase from sellers and stores on our platform, but had little insight as to why we were losing engaged parties along the way, before check-out.

Approach:

  • A review of current state purchase path metrics to see what behavior at scale looked like, and identify research participant profiles

  • Generative research with the current experience and users access a range of spectrums (novice to pro, adventurous to careful, current users to potential) to capture the wider research process and understand their current experience on our site

  • Collaborative ideation with design, SEO, content strategy and product engineering to generate and prioritize alternative ways of exploring the search and browse experience

  • Live experiments with segments of the user base to roll out new support for way-finding and decision-making to finalize UX and quant measures for general rollout

More case studies

Insights

We knew that people did their research pre-purchase, but not the how much… we observed recursive loops of research across users of all types before proceeding. Shopping for this type of purchase was rarely a linear process, and often would take 3 or 4 trips back and forth from the platform, to competitor sites, to social video reviews, and conversations with their IRL community. What’s more, people liked the back and forth, it was part of the fun!


Outcome

Instead of trying to move them through the purchase path for big ticket items as fast as possible, we increased the visibility of expert testimonial and user-generated content (ratings, reviews, pro videos, instruction guides) to acknowledge the need for info and context, and made it easier to pick up where they left off, even if they left and returned.