CLG Contractor page
Create a landing page and backend portal to facilitate Contractor growth and nurture the existing B2B Contractors with access to specific assets while onsite with clients like a photo gallery & quoting tool.
Research
Issues:
The Country Lane website has nothing about working with B2B Contractors. The site does not cater to our other B2B partner group and not actively trying to garner more contractors to work with, which is leaving millions to other competitors.
Research:
I conducted several interviews with the contractor sales department and B2B contacts to ask various questions about their needs and tasks. Research other competitor sites to see if they have this sales opportunity on their sites.
Interviewed some contractors about their day-to-day activities. Ask specific questions like, "what do you look for in a new vendor?"
“why would you work with us instead of building an outdoor structure yourself?”
Interesting Turn of Events:
Contractors are a different group altogether, which they’re a different group of users. Contractors use their phones to do 80% of their communication. Most of them didn’t hear about Country Lane except for landscaping/hardscaping shows. Many other competitor sites required long forms, which is a large ask to fill out a form by phone.
I also found our Contractors work for a specific client that wants better materials, well built outdoor structures, and beautifully designed structures. These customers tend to be more affluent. Our current Contractors enjoy the variety of woods we offer (Red Western Cedar being the most popular). Why not create landing page elements that appeal to new Contractor customers while demonstrating the company's value?
Client
CLG/B2B Contractors
Year
2021
Project Leader
Tara Clevenstine
Nothing exists on the site about Contractor’s sales or whether we work with Contractors. Our competition has a page for new Contractor leads. A temporary solution the marketing group (we work with) used the same template as the dealer page. Dealers and Contractors are different personas. The challenge is to market to that specific group using specific elements and copy.
In my interviews, several things stood out from the Dealers we work with yearly.
Contractors build a lot of custom outdoor spaces, whereas Dealers sell the standard unit without modifications.
The average amount per unit we sell is upwards of $40,000-50,000!
Contractors also don’t want to have a carpenter on the site because of the expense of materials and hiring one. Some are small businesses.
Make the landing page user centric, instead a large form to collect a lot of information before the B2B partner feels comfortable with us.
The Challenge
The reason for completing a persona is to understand and empathize with the Contractor. The assumption is to place them in with the Dealers, but Contractors are very different with specific needs, e.g., mobile-friendly website. I wanted to keep Contractor goals and tasks in the forefront so when the ideation & designing starts, we understand the needs of our end-user. With the help of the Director of Marketing's copy skills, I created several wireframes.
Persona
Background Information
Name: Dave
Age: 38
Occupation: Landscaper | Hardscaping Owner
Location: Long Island:
Needs: Find an outdoor manufacturing company that builds quality outdoor structures for half the price of him building it onsite with the materials & a professional carpenter. A company that can install, draw engineered (sealed) drawings, & give on-the-spot quoting while using his mobile phone. He doesn’t have time for office work.
How Might we…
Better educate and show our value to contractors about our products and offerings?
Make the customer journey easy?
Make the quoting tool accessible for existing and new contractors?
How can we speed up Dave’s sign-up experience?
Show Dave how to sell these projects in his designs and projects?
goals & Needs
Goals
More user centric experience. There was nothing here before this project.
Easy access to helpful tools like the Design tool an brochures downloads.
Business-side: Capture leads and better contractor outreach to garner more new contractors coming on board with Country Lane.
Needs
Education about products.
Promote different materials (quality wood products).
Educate B2B about building by ones self vs. through Country Lane using price, value, & quality of materials.
Observations & Tasks
Observations
The website had nothing there before; now the current page content doesn’t the contractors language.
Filling out a long for on a mobile screen.
They cannot find the information needed and moved on fast from the site.
Tasks
Find answers to questions about the product, sizing, and materials.
Easy to navigate/find sources without a lot searching and a way to get a rough estimate of cost.
Experience Solutions
Better Design Patterns to draw in customer & speak their language.
Use Gestalt Principles to give hierarchy to information and components.
Create areas to educate the customer about the product and its value.
Make the form short & simple for better mobile user experience.
Appealing to Dave’s needs//tasks; drawings, install, on-the-spot quoting and access to a portal
Mobile Layout
We created a wireframe also to test because a large percentage of our Contractors use a cellphone for all communications. The form is good for gathering information from new Contractors using a Collection Design Pattern. More are willing to fill out the form because it's not comprehensive like other competitor forms. I estimate this will cut our Contractor's bounce rate because of the previous issues (language, lack of education about the products, long form to fill out, etc.
B2B Contractor Page-First Wireframe Test
The first test run with users but found too simple and didn't address needs like the incentive language & better copy (written by Vincent Reedy). After discussing the results with our B2B department, Vincent and I revamped the wireframe.
A user centric form to gather new contractors to boost sales by 10%.
This is competing with the competitors in the outdoor structure industry.
Educating our contractor base (B2B) customers about how much we add value to their projects, which has doubled the quotes from our contractors because now they have a backend portal to access a variety of assets.
In turn, these assets give them the ability upsell additions to their projects and make more money.