Enhance user experience and user journey of users and partnered shops of the brand in order to track and increase the transactions more faster and more efficiently.

Overview: ILG or The Independent Liquor Group used an outdated website to monitor their members, their transactions, deliveries and inventory. This project was a collaboration between multiple designers, and I handled the onboarding hub and few main pages.

Role: UI/UX designer and Web designer

Industry: Liquor, Tobacco, SaaS

Tools: Figma, Adobe XD, FigJam, Slack

Duration: Q2-Q3 2024

UX Research

Product background

ILG is a brand that comprises of cooperative licensed liquor stores, hotels, registered clubs, and restaurants that collaborate to secure optimal services and benefits while preserving their autonomy and independence. The cooperative operates six distinct banner groups: Fleet Street, Bottler, Super Cellars, Clubmart, Pubmart, and ILG On Premise. The redesign aims to provide a fresh look, better user experience and a way for users and shops to get products and marketing materials from the headquarters faster and efficient.

Product background

The business aims to make all transactions via their portal fast and more efficient, this includes requests for marketing materials from the headquarters or other branches. Aside from users benefiting from this change, this will also create a great change for their investors and partners.

The issue we’re trying to find a solution

The current live site was using outdated theme, technology and design. The user journey was also not organized with majority of the key features are only accessible or given out by the ILG team, their members and suppliers manually by sending out link invites via email. This produced a lot of pain point for the company’s users—both members and suppliers.

*this was the current live site that the brand is using to direct users and partnered shops to their members portal. You may check it on this link: https://members.ilg.com.au/WebMembers/LOGIN/Login.asp

Methodologies

  • Competitive Analysis

  • User Interviews

User Interview

The users of ILG are different from what we have at my country. However, this did create a basis of what the users in the Australia where ILG is located.

So what did we find out?

  • The product needs to be inclusive for those users that are not too knowledgeable or beginner in the wine and alcohol industry.

  • Drink recommendations are always welcome across all users.

  • The project has to have a detailed filter including: food that tastes good along with the recommended drink, type of drink, where it was brewed and so on.

  • The project should have product and marketing materials tracking capabilities for both inventory and delivery.

  • The project needs to have clear instructions on what does what.

UX Design

Project Goals

The business goal for ILG is to maximize the distribution and retail efficiency, and build a long lasting relationships with the brand’s partnered shops and customers. In return, these will create a loyal community for the partnered shops. User goals are basically what they want to get from using the website. By determining these, it gave me an idea of the approach that would benefit both the business and users.

Information Architecture

The project consists of multiple designers in charge of different pages. However, in my case I was assigned on onboarding hub and several main pages of the dashboard where users can do their transactions. Which is why the next sections that I will be showing are more focused on my part.

UX Design IDeas

Idea 1: Provide an Onboarding hub where potential partner shops can submit or attach their documents instead of calling ILG directly and inquire the step by step process.

Pro:

  • This will shorten the time spent talking with the potential partner shops. They will still be called by ILG team, however it will only be for confirmation and few questions or additional requirements if needed.

Con:

  • This will be a long and tedious work for the new partner shops, however this will also give them the freedom to submit their documents without any pressure.

Idea 2: Providing digital versions of any marketing material to the customers’ physical stores by accessing the same website and dashboard and just putting and attaching the soft copy of the marketing material.

Pro:

  • Deliveries will only need to focus on products itself aside from big events that would need an actual printed marketing materials.

  • On time marketing material changes across all physical stores since this can be accessed online.

Con:

  • This is not a conventional way of changing marketing materials so there will be some that are not too familiar with how this works.
    This will require screens or any kind of digital output like TV’s

Idea 3: Provide a faster and efficient way to post something on the customer’s physical store social media account.

Pro:

  • This is an upgrade most especially if each store have their own social media accounts. The owner or maybe the regional managers can easily post anything just by accessing the ILG service.

Con:

  • This has some learning curve but it shouldn’t take that long to learn.

The Proposed Design

Prototype

I was assigned on the onboarding hub and few main pages. For the contents used, I had so much discussions with the client to confirm and clarify all requirements a shop needed to be a partner of ILG. As for the UI and UX of the new service, I made it simple to understand but can be quite tedious in some way. However, I think these are necessary steps to accomplish beforehand especially with liquor or tobacco industry that commonly requires a lot of documents before anyone can setup.

Outcome

The finished design was approved by the client and the team with few iterations here and there. The changes was also liked by the current users of ILG service, so we’re expecting the same results for the next users.

The client also decided that this can only be accessed via a laptop, computer or tablet. Since it has so much details that anyone might miss if access on a mobile phone.

Key Takeaways

Challenge

  • How to make the experience not too tedious while still keeping it aligned with the countries’ rules and regulations in the liquor industry.

    How to make the user journey as smooth as possible while keeping the user interface simple and easy to understand.

    I am not from Australia, so the user experience could be different from my country. However, the user interview I’ve had should be suffice as the basis for the first designs I made. If there will be iterations in the future, might be a good idea to get interviews from their country.

Lesson Learned

  • Due to limited time and resources, I was forced to skip few steps just to meet the client’s deadline. A simpler process would be great while keeping it simple, this is to make sure that all requirements are met before the actual designing starts.

    Not all users needs to be pleased. Just focus on the target audience’s needs and the rest will follow.

Next Project

UI/UX design and Web Design | Figma, Adobe XD, FigJam, Slack