CAR SHIPPING ACROSS US - part 2

OVERVIEW

🗓️2022

BOOKING, TRACKING and Owner & Client DASHBOARD

The process I followed to work on this project and to develop the solution I delivered follows the same generic formula : understand, research, competitive audit, user journey, pain points, sketches, wireframes, prototyping, user testing.
Everyone’s method is somewhat the same. The steps are just a framework to support the story.
There is no point in me explaining the daunting process of assembling all these pieces of information to obtain another case study tediously framed - I know from experience you will not even read it. I filled in the UX Case Study template and I will not focus on that for presenting the work here. But, if you want to read some, please check out this self directed UX case study I did a couple of years ago which is thoroughly documented. I will approach this by providing some background about how I worked with the client, what were his requests and for some parts I will give more details as they’re not confidential.

To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have left out confidential information intentionally.

MY ROLE, TIMEFRAME and TOOLS USED

I worked between Oct 2021 and Feb 2022 as the sole UX designer for the second part of the project. I worked in close collaboration with the owner of the company, he putting me in connection with some of his clients for me to do research and gather insights.
Thus, I did the research, wireframing, prototyping and assemble all pieces into the final design.
I used Sketch, as main tool for design, and Figma for prototyping.

After the final design was approved with the client and the design documentation from my side was done, I delivered the project and my involvement came to an end.

The web app is planned to start being built.

THE BRIEF for Phase2

Q: What is the success story?
A: My client is fully booked with shipping orders mainly for luxury cars and his Google reviews are astonishing.

Q: What were the high level goals?
A: Here they are:

• Make it fast and easy to use for everyone, everywhere.
• Give clients more control over their time and money and have a clear picture what they’re booking.
• Create a platform for innovation and deeper engagement.

Expanding the initial digital solution and adding new features to the website was essential for meeting the needs of the marketplace. With new clients coming in and schedule being full almost all the time, changes were requested by the owner.
After all the research done, calls and presentations had with the client, the deliverables were settled and agreed upon.

Thus, these are briefly the additions for the phase two of BOD Auto Transport & Logistics:
Client has an account from where he can:

• Book a shipment online. Until now, made only via telephone or email.
• Track a shipment.
• Cancel a shipment or change details about the ride under some circumstances.
• Keep a record of his invoices

Owner has an admin panel on the web app from where he can:

• Manage shipping schedule and availability / calendar.
• Manage invoices.
• Edit received orders in a timely manner, if required (cancel or update shipments).
• Other private custom features business requires 🙂

The NEED EXPLAINED

Thanks to a booming start of the business with a full schedule and lots of luxury cars delivered all over the US, additions were imperative to the web app. Company surpassed the beginning phase of a business and its needs expanded.

So the first step for the project’s phase 2 was for me to understand mainly the following standpoints regarding the conduct of business so far:

• How client receives orders
• How client makes visible his schedule for the customer
• How client estimates a total price for the order and communicates the amount for the service
• How the payment is done
• How the shipment tracking is done by the customer
• What are the most frequent requests he received from the customers

With inclusive answers for the questions above - provided by the client - and with complementary information received from three past customers after having interviews with them, I could frame the needs, frustrations and insights for the solution I was hired to provide.

Note: Will talk briefly as nobody is interested honestly in reading looooooong text paragraphs 😀

To outline the most important expectations, issues and opportunities derived from exploring those, I will frame each as follows:

• fact / issue: People avoid to spend their time reaching out to different companies to request quotes to get an idea about the offered services and what the market is about. Is a heavy and time consuming process getting in touch with different companies for quotes, followed up by phone calls to receive an offer. And all of this just to get an idea about what the market is offering => goal / solution: to make sure a lead turns into a booking, company must be transparent about costs and services. Entire booking process must be build to be used easily by the client.

• Business integrity and professionalism are relevant when people do online research to find a shipping company to help them with car delivery. How they choose one and what matters the most in evaluating facts and decide? => goal: earn people’s trust by showing former customers’ reviews and by providing a practical and straightforward digital solution which is transparent about the costs and all steps involved up to delivery (for example, by making very easy for the paperwork to be signed and no hidden terms)

• The shipping industry is very competitive, and most people will try to match lower estimates from competitors in order to find the best deal. But since there are also a lot of unreliable car carriers in the filed, price criteria only when deciding may be insufficient and unfit. => goal: keeping in mind the price should be competitive, here is an opportunity for the company to give the client options when deciding what he should book. A way of doing it is to provide the prices in detailed manner for each option possible, and let him book a custom shipping. This way client knows what he pays for and even increase the reliability. To give some examples for better understanding:
  • door-to-door delivery is a pricier service compared to terminal-to-terminal delivery
  • deliver a car into an enclosed carrier costs more compared to open carriers
  • tracking a shipment from a user account is an exquisite service that other competitors may be doing via email or phone, which costs client time, or may not be doing at all
  • make client aware if delay may occur due to weather changes or en-route restrictions caused to accidents. This service provides real-time updates to customers and sets company apart from competitors

To conclude my foundational research, I did a competitive analysis to see how others from the market were addressing these aspects and what I could improve and bring additions that were not addressed yet.

🔨 section under development

Other confidential data is not shared on purpose.

PRESENTING VISUALS

🔨 section under development

Sharing the flow for booking a shipment, with an emphasis on the insights gathered from the research and how I addressed them into the design solution.
There is nothing too surprising on a booking flow, but the approach acumen concerning the solution makes the customer’s expectations to be met.

A huge impact is made by making possible for the customer to get a price estimation for the ride he wants to book or to check the company’s availability for the upcoming period of time. This two features help the customer get an accurate idea about how precisely the company will deliver. The user testing done on the wireframes show how these two choices made available for the customer are a game changer and have a huge impact on client retention. So, this is a significant first step into delivering the customers what they need and expect from us.
Although it may seems an ordinary feature for a business like this, just one competitor from the ones analyzed offers this option. The only possibility is to get a quote only by phone after you fill in a form. Besides, others don’t even request the dates for the shipment to take place, only the pickup and drop-off locations, and all the other aspects will be talked over the phone.

For this presentation I will move forward with providing grounds and actual design for the booking flow.
Considering at this point into the flow the choices are checking availability and estimating the price, and there is no need to request from the user pointless information. Save time and build trust showing that for this step no sensitive info is required. Therefore, providing the cities and states for the pickup and drop-off are for now enough for the algorithm implemented by developer to provide estimates regarding the ride. With rendered information, customer has the option to move forward and to check company’s availability for the route, or to check only the price estimation and to see if it changes according to other customization that he can make.

Moving forward to the next screen, the user can choose what suits him best just by showing him the available slots from the company’s calendar. Those are precisely calculated based on the info requested from the user a step before and checked against the current timetable of the company.

When user is choosing a timeframe according to his wants, a thorough check is done against other databases. The grounds stand into increasing the accuracy of the estimation given to the user, building again the trust with him. A more just estimation for this shipment is reassuring the user about the company’s professionalism.
For this representation a warning is shown regarding a snow storm. There is a 1 day delay chance, based on the weather forecast for all the states on the route for the timeframe in which the shipment must take place.
Be aware that when this happens, the slots available in the calendar are considering the 1 day delay chance and the availability shown may change. This again reassures the user about the company's courtesy and determination to provide the best services. For the case presented there is availability past Jan 12, so nothin is changed.

Moving forward, additional details are demanded from the user in regards to the shipment he wants to book. This requested information will help both driver and user to coordinate the pickup and drop-off when they will take place on the established day.

On the next step towards finishing booking a shipment, the payment page follows the usual layout expected. The shipping summary items are displayed, the service’s cost is breakdown into units so the total amount that should be paid is clear, and the card details are requested as expected.
Nothing spectacular about this page, the displayed information is according to the client’s request.

Another requested feature for the second part of the project was the possibility for the user to track his shipment and to have a real-time visibility over its booking and progress when delivery is on progress. This feature will also be included in my presentation here, and I will broadly explain the topic.

Logged into the account, the user can access from the sidebar tab the Orders category. Over there a list of all his past bookings is available and selecting the current booking that is in progress he can view its status. On this page, he can see that the pickup was successfully done, and the driver’s whereabouts on the route. Heading to the drop-off location, on a tooltip on the map the location and an estimate about how many miles are left is shown. The idea is for the user to always have visibility about the status of the order. Real-time data is imperative.

Another crucial aspect on which we worked on, was the regularly updating ETA based on the the traffic and weather forecast on the route. To better understand my point, here is a warning about an accident that had happened further on the road. The driver may be delayed due to this and obviously the user must acknowledge this.