How Decathlon created powerful B2B experience

Business background

DECATHLON is Europe's largest sports network, with over 1500 stores in 49 countries.

The company opened its first store in 1976. In Poland it sells in 60 locations and offers products from 70 sports disciplines. It also provides customers throughout the country with access to a wide range of online offers.

B2B gift card

Decathlon Polska has always supported physical activity, inspired sports and promoted a healthy lifestyle. One of the tools to implement this strategy was the introduction of the Decathlon Gift Card for Business in 2014. It is an excellent idea to reward and motivate employees. It is used by large, medium and small enterprises, sports clubs, competition organizers, marketing and promotion agencies. The card can be purchased on a dedicated website: www.kartapodarunkowadlabiznesu.decathlon.pl

Decathlon approached us to analyze and optimize the business-to-business customer experience. In order to diagnose the usability of the service, select problematic areas and prepare a list of recommendations to improve its operation, we conducted a usability audit - Eryk Ulewicz, Head of UX w Strix

Power of usability

The main factors contributing that have been taken into account during the performance of the usability tests were:

availability

Does the website not cause irritation by loading for too long? Does the interface react immediately? Does a shopping cart allow you to quickly increase or decrease the number of individual goods and automatically count the amount without having to click on the "Recalculate" button?

ergonomics

Do the texts have the right size and are they clearly visible? Doesn't the color scheme of the website or the number of fonts used at the same time cause the impression of information overload? Do the photos allow you to see the details of the product?

transparency of the information architecture

Is the home page clear and allows you to quickly find out what the shop offers? Do you always know where to click to go further or how to get back? Do action buttons and navigation menu items have clear labels? Does the shopping cart view show delivery costs or the threshold for free delivery?

resistance to user errors

Do the forms indicate which field was incorrectly filled in and why? Is the search engine able to make sense of zooming in and is it resistant to typos?

Test methods and technology

We used three research methods (quantitative and qualitative) to check the usability of the store - moderated tests with users, click tracking tests and usability audit. The triangulation of the above research methods has provided a complete overview of the website/product/ service - both from the user's perspective and from the generally accepted good design practices.

Click tracking research

The tracking clicks research was carried out using the Yandex Metrica tool, which we implanted in the current website, together with Google Analytics.  Next, we analyzed the obtained heat maps and selected sessions (where users potentially had problems with completing the purchase path). The research allowed us to determine with which areas of the website users' interaction is carried out and which are not.

Moderated tests with users

Usability tests verify the correctness of the design and operation of the service. They are particularly useful when redesigning a product, introducing new functions or as evaluation tests every now and then. Our team conducted tests based on a scenario consisting of 10 problematic tasks. The aim was to identify errors that may be encountered by users on the current page, through which the user may leave our site. The tests were accompanied by individual in-depth interviews and questionnaires, which were conducted at the very end of the tests.

Expert usability audit

Usability audit was based on methods: cognitive path and heuristic analysis. The cognitive pathway method allows us to reproduce the actions performed by a person, so that we can observe the difficulties they encounter. The heuristic analysis allows us to check the compliance of the website with the generally accepted design principles.

Content optimisation

The content of the website and the experience experienced in interacting with a given brand have a significant impact on the customer's purchasing path. That is why we also took care of the preparation, editing, translation and optimization of content for the service.