Ruibals Plants of Texas is a plant nursery located in Dallas, Texas. Known for their wide collections of flowers, faunas and planting supplies, Ruibals Plants of Texas has been a major supplier to the gardening community of Dallas, Texas. To promote sales and traffic in-store, Ruibals has an online e-commerce website and an Instagram page. To confirm if their potentials customers were using the Instagram to go to the website and buy their products/services and go to the in-person store, I was assigned to do a full study on Ruibal's Plants of Texas company website and Instagram page.
The first thing I did was set a baseline. To set my baseline, I studied the current Ruibal's Plants of Texas website (ruibalsplants.com) and Instagram @ruibalsplants. By seeing their current follower count and average likes on posts, it sets a benchmark to see if there was any significant change from implementing my feedback. After studying @Ruibalsplants, I studied the website. I went through the home page, location page, inventory page, and more to see what their current set up is. I made notes of pain points (ex. on the 'Plant Search' page, under the item, it doesn't show the price or place to add to your cart).
Ruibals - Benchmark Instagram numbers
Ruibals - Benchmark for Website
To see if there current Instagram profile is getting their goal across, I conducted a competitor analysis. I chose two competitors to Ruibals based on their proximity to Ruibals (DFW area), the products and services they sell (flowers faunas, etc.). The chosen competitors I analyzed were Calloway Nursery and Home Depot. I checked their follower count, see if they also cross follow Ruibals Plants, see the average likes on their post. With this information, I was able to see what is missing on Ruibals website, what is lacking and what should be removed/improved on the current Instagram Page. After taking notes about the competitor's Instagram pages, I went to their websites. On their websites, I took note of the site layout, the pages that they used and their pain points. By taking note of what the competitors are doing on their site, It gives a baseline of what a customer expects and what the customer is missing. Things that are missing that can be added to the Ruibals Instagram and website to make them stand out against the competitors.
Calloway's Nursery - Instagram
Calloways.com
Home Depot - Instagram
Homedepot.com
Through the Instagram and corporate website competitor analysis I was able to identify some things that Ruibals is missing and what the competitors are missing, that Ruibals can use to their advantage. But that is simply MY OPINION. I needed to get insight from other potential customers. Thus, I conducted user interviews over Zoom with 3 participants. For approximatly 30 minutes each, I started the interview getting a baseline on their experience using corporate social media pages and corporate website. With this info, I was able to set up a baseline on what type of customers expect for a corporate Instagram and corporate website. The next portions was allowing the participants to explore the instagram. I let them explore as much as they want, being neutral but taking note of how long they look on a certain page, what they chose to look at and how long they took exploring. Once they let me know they were finished, I asked them for their thoughts on the corporate media, asking what stood out to them and why, what they ignored and why. After exploring the Instagram the participant would go to the corporate website (ruibalsplants.com). Once again, I let the participants go through the website at their own pace, only taking notes about what they stop on and what they ignored. After exploring the website, I asked the participants their opinion on the website, what interested them, what they ignored. With that, the last portion of the interview was a compare and contrast between the ruibalsplants.com and @ruibalsplants, which they preferred to learn more about Ruibals Plants and which they preferred to buy from and the trustworthiness of the two.
With the information from my competitive analysis and the 3 user interviews, I used ChatGPT to aid in my analysis. I prompted ChatGPT to point out common phrases and sentiments found in the user interviews. ChatGPT provided some common phrases but it wasn't extensive enough. After going back and forth with ChatGPT, using it's response to look more into the data, I was able to get good data. I had to discern between what was usable and not, sometimes even prompting in alternative phrasing and providing reference examples to ChatGPT to get usable data. It took some time but with the aid of AI, I was able to provide examples of what was missing, what was needed, a plan for how to implement the needed changes and the ROI for implementing the changes.
With all the data analyzed by me and AI, I crafted a 20+ slide presentation for the Ruibal's Plants of Texas. Though I am a User Researcher, the owner of Ruibal's Plants of Texas is not. So instead of using heavy technical UX terms, I designed the presentation to be understandable for a business owner. When I presented my research to the Senior UX Designer, I made sure to explain that all the insight I am providing was not simply from conjecture, but thoroughly tested and observable interviews. With the info I then provided, I explained how I didn't simply just throw the info into an AI LLM and just went with what they gave me. I told them the process of using AI to highlight some common pain points, but guiding the AI, not following it. With all this analysis and data accumulation, I then presented my findings, some suggested actions and the impact +ROI for implementing them.
Ruibal's Plants of Texas - Title
Ruibal's Plants of Texas - Report Essentials
Ruibal's Plants of Texas - Research - IG v Website
Ruibal's Plants of Texas - Research - Cross Channel
Ruibal's Plants of Texas - Recommendations Example - Instagram
My Senior UX Designer was highly impressed with my research. He made note of how making a list of all the recommendations in one big list, I divided based on priority. The decision to do it based on priority
