Business goals & CONTEXT

FJONG is a digital platform for Norwegian women to rent and lend clothes and accessories, giving them access to the largest wardrobe in Norway. The premise that one can access a variety of high-quality outfits for a fraction of the cost of buying, save closet space by lending out seldom-worn items, and consume more responsibly has proved popular among urban women, leading more than 50,000 users to register on the FJONG platform since its founding in 2016.

I joined the FJONG team in 2018 as their first UX designer, tasked with improving the digital interface and physical and digital interactive experience of the FJONG platform to support rapid growth and scaling. As little attention had been paid to these areas prior to my arrival, my first step was to take a step back and understand the current state of the FJONG user experience.

To help frame the experience, I began by sketching a simple journey map for the two main types of FJONG rental customers, those that began their relationship with FJONG online, and those that began by walking into the (physical) FJONG showroom.

USER RESEARCH

Next, I began to collect feedback from FJONG customers about their experiences. I gathered this feedback in several different ways. To gain an immediate understanding of the holistic experience, I first focused on qualitative methods:

• Renting an outfit and going through the entire customer journey myself

• Observing the behavior of customers visiting the FJONG showroom

• Interviewing a variety of customers about their experience with FJONG

• Interviewing front-line staff about their experiences serving FJONG customers

With FJONG’s goals for rapid growth and scaling in mind, I also recognized the need to set up more formalized and quantitative feedback measures to help ensure that product development initiatives would be prioritized in line with customer desires. These initiatives included:

• Setting up a feedback survey to be sent to each customer after returning their rental (asking about their experience with each step along their journey as well as overall motivations for using FJONG and demographic details)

• Working with the tech team to configure Google Analytics to track key events in the customer journey (registration, search usage, initiating checkout, placing order, repeat site visits)

IDENTIFYING PAIN POINTS

Based on this initial feedback, I was able to immediately identify several pain points in the user journey, particular in the early stages, which are critical for capturing new customers to grow the company.

For users who first initiated contact with FJONG online, by visiting FJONG.com:

1. The landing page did not encourage visitors to register and proceed to the FJONG website. It provided very little information about what FJONG was, leading many potential users to simply bounce rather than spend the additional time and energy to investigate further. And the fact that registration was required in order to access information added an additional step that many visitors felt was too much hassle to undertake, especially without being able to access information confirming that they indeed wanted to be a member of FJONG.

2. Once registered and able to access the FJONG website and view the available inventory, many users discovered that they were not actually interested in becoming a customer and ended their relationship with FJONG.

3. The search process was very cumbersome. No open text search was available, filters did not align with commonly searched items, and filters often returned irrelevant results. 

4. Once an item was located that the user liked, there was no way to know if the item would fit (unless the user was already familiar with the sizing of that particular brand). 

For users who first initiated contact with FJONG in person, by visiting the showroom:

5. Most visitors assumed that the FJONG showroom was simply a boutique, as there was nothing to suggest otherwise at first glance. The rental concept was only clear once personally explained by a staff member. 

6. Once visitors understood the concept, it was difficult for them to understand the type of inventory one could rent. Only a fraction of inventory was on display in the showroom and searching for other items required searching FJONG.com either on the showroom computer or a personal device (which required the visitor to create an account). If an item was found online, it was often difficult for the showroom staff to locate it quickly enough for a showroom visitor to see or try it on immediately. 

7. If a showroom visitor did locate an item they wanted to rent, they then had to complete several steps before checking out. 1) Registering as a user on FJONG.com (if not done previously), 2) searching for the item in hand on the website (showroom staff could help with this process, but it was still cumbersome), 3) entering their credit card on the website to checkout (as the showroom looked like a boutique, customers expected a standard POS system)

8. Lastly, for all customers, after their rental has been returned, there was no follow up. The feedback survey I had constructed and embedded in a “thank you” email partially solved this problem, but there was still a missed opportunity for encouraging repeat rental and referrals.