Paragon Sporting Goods’ Website Improved Proposal

Have you ever gone on a website and realized there is an unnecessary number of items in a navigation list? Or have you ever questioned how a website organizes its pages? Well, I had not until I was assigned a project on Information Architecture for my General Assembly class a few weeks ago.

I was tasked with analyzing Paragon Sporting Goods' existing website to assess the usability and functionality of their desktop website and its competitors.

RESEARCH

Heuristic Analysis

To begin this process I conducted a heuristic evaluation of three primary pages of the site. I did this as a means to test the website against website standards and to see if there were any glaring mistakes or problems. More specifically, I used the Abby method to qualify this data, looking at the categories: Findable, Accessible, Clear, Communication, Useful, Credibility, Controllable, Valuable, Learnable and Delightful. For each of these categories, I ranked each overall as either a Major Problem, Medium Problem, Minor Problem or Meeting Best Practices.

In summary, I found that the homepage ranked as a Medium Problem. This mainly related to the fact that the communication between the user and the store was not ideal — it took me several visits to the store's website before I was able to find the chat button.

I also found that the Gear page on the site ranked overall as having a Minor Problem. This was due to the fact that the user had to scroll far down towards the bottom before having access to the products. For many users, this could cause an annoyance. Another reason this was ranked as a Minor Problem was that in mobile view I had to click gear to then be sent to a second navigation where I again had to click gear. Once again, creating a pain point for the user they would have extra clicks to go through.

The last page I assessed was the Store page. I found that overall this page ranked as Meeting Best Practices. This was because the information was easy for the user to synthesize and easily provided the user with what they came to that page for. With that said, relating back to the overall look and functionality of the entire site, this page had some pain points in terms of Communication (same as above), Accessibility and Credibility. For Accessibility, when moving from mobile to desktop views, the website was inconsistent; the second tier navigation bar changed from a black background with white text (desktop) to a white background with black text. (mobile.) For Credibility, the reason I ranked it as a Medium Problem was that I felt the overall feel of the website did not encompass their target user: an active individual in search of specialty sports equipment.

The Business Model Canvas

After completing the heuristic evaluation, I turned to a business model canvas. Here, I was looking to identify and understand Paragon Sporting Goods’ revenue sources, customer base, products and detail of financing.

From this exercise, I was able to have a better understanding of Paragon’s demographics, values, and revenue. A specific takeaway was that for Paragon’s Customer Relationships it had two specific markets: Newbie and Loyal. As well as for Paragon’s Customer Segments it had two markets: Niche and Athletic.

Competitive/Comparative Analysis

Next as a means to better understand the market Paragon Sporting Goods was in, I created a Competitive/Comparative Analysis. For this, I used Dick’s Sporting Goods and Modell’s Sporting Goods as competitors and Bloomingdales as a comparator.

Overall, I found that all four sites contained many of the same features. The main takeaways were that Paragon should consider implementing access to a user’s wishlist on the homepage and that a user should have quick and easy access to tracking their order.

User Flow Diagram

My next step was to create a user flow diagram. I wanted to replicate all possible steps a user could take to complete a task. As previously mentioned for this project my target user was an active individual looking for specialty sporting equipment. Therefore, for the user flow I wanted to see all the possible ways a user could buy camping gear.

In summary, I found there were 15 screens and 10 decision points involved. I also noted that the main decision points occurred when dealing with logging in and having a profile account, or when users filtered for products.

TESTING

Card Sorting

Now came the testing and the time to see if my research could be backed by data. To do this I turned to card sorting. I wrote out each item in the existing Paragon navigation bar on an index card and the header titles on another set of index cards. To get the most accurate data I used both open and closed card sorting. In other words, I asked 3 users to place the index cards into the headers they believed fit and I asked another 4 users to categorize the index cards into their own headers. What I found can be seen below.

From my card sorting, I discovered that when users were provided with the top navigation bar (closed sorting), the overall trend was to replicate the existing navigation system on Paragon’s website. The cards that differed were “waterproof” and “kids.” Therefore, I turned to the open card sorting data to better understand how the user thought, so I could create my own navigation system that would be intuitive to the user. Due to the limited data, I found trends among my open sort by calculating the sum of each category and highlighting the ones with the largest value.

I found that my new categories would be: Mens, Womens, Kids, Shoes, Shop by Activity, Outdoor Adventures, New, Brands and Sale. The main changes that I made were that I changed Footwear to Shoes and Activities to Outdoor Activities and removed the Gear section. I did this because the majority of my users had a category that contained the word “shoes.” I also changed the other category because most users had a section with the word “outdoor” in the title. I also removed the section titled Gear and moved the majority of those items into Outdoor Adventure.

With that said, although I had my caterogies there were several items left unaccounted for. Therefore, I returned back to my closed sort to see where those items fell. I learned that Casual had been placed under Footwear by users (where Paragon had put it) so I too placed Casual under Shoes. Hydration and Watches/HRM were moved from Gear to Outdoor Adventure as they were both items used on these adventures.

Sitemap

Next, to better understand how all the content on Paragon’s site related to one another, I created a Sitemap. First, I created one for the existing site, and then I made one for my new version.

Hi-Fi Mockups

Now that I had all my information, I turned to Sketch to create Hi-Fi mockups on the new navigation system.

From there, I returned to user testing. I was interested to see how my website compared to the existing one, so I tested my 4 users on the time it took them to complete the same task on both sites. Specifically, I asked the user to find camping gear.

Unfortunately, 0/4 users succeeded in completing the task from my version of the navigation bar in a quicker time period then on the original Paragon Sporting Goods’ site. With that said, however, 4/4 users succeeded in completing the task of finding the camping gear on both versions of the website.

Many users struggled because they expected camping to be in Outdoor Adventure since it is an outdoor activity. However, due to my first round of user testing, camping was placed under Shop by Activity. Therefore, my next steps would be to keep camping under Shop by Activity as users were able eventually to find it there, but to also create a location for it under Outdoor Adventures.