ROLE: Research
The research project on Zim's website took place in 2022 and lasted about a month and a half, during which we conducted intensive research on a variety of tools and capabilities that the website has to offer - starting with page loading times (relative to the website and in relation to the leading competitors in the market), through examining the tools that the website has to offer in relation to competitors, and up to To present options for upgrading the site and improving it in order to surpass the competitors.
The purpose of the study was to point out to the Zim company its strengths and weaknesses in relation to its competitors and actually help it build a work plan for the rest of the year focusing on their weak points
The project took place under the studio where I work, but I was responsible for most of the research results (with the exception of a visual examination of the site on which the UI designer worked).
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The ZIM Project
A little bit about ZIM
ZIM Integrated Shipping Services Ltd. is a global shipping company traded on the New York Stock Exchange. ZIM operates in the maritime transport sector and is one of the ten largest companies in the world for transporting containers by sea.
The company's website (zim.com) allows its customers to place orders for shipping cargo in a variety of global trade areas, receive up-to-date information regarding the sailing schedule, tracking shipments, various calculators for calculating shipping costs, and a variety of other complementary digital services.
First Step- Listening & Learning
Because this is a completely new world of content for me and the entire studio team, we opened several meetings of listening only and absorbing the content required to dive into the depths of the world of maritime transport. We spoke with several company employees and heard from them about the conduct of the website, how it serves the customers and how it is operated from their side.
We listened and learned about the existing website and the existing tools on it and why they are important to customers. We recorded and summarized the meetings in order to process the information in the best possible way.
Since the site contains more than a hundred pages, we mapped the site pages as a whole under a system tree, and together with the customers we chose to focus on more specific areas where we see greater potential for improvement and providing a significantly better user experience to the users.
We chose to mostly work on comparing the five leading companies in the field and comparing Zim's website in a variety of parameters such as loading speed, tools and ease of use and more.
Second Step- Mapping the Site
Full Research
This is the list of topics I examined as part of the research:
1
Site's performance in terms of loading speed and page weights
2
Comparison of tools with leading competitors in the market
3
Reviewing forms and examining the user's experience of them in relation to themselves and in relation to competitors
4
Marketing support regarding the effectiveness of the banners on the site
5
A flood of innovative ideas that will bring the site to a level above the competititors
Creating a summary interactive presentation that includes all the information collected & conclusions
A Taste of the Research Comparisons Methods
In order to produce a comparison between Zim's website and competing companies, we created a wide array of comparisons in various parameters.
As you can see, the comparison of two parallel axes - the amount of tools provided to users on the site versus the ease of use and their quality.
Another comparison in a specific prism of the site - its design level, while giving emphasis according to different parameters. The dark blue color symbolizes the place where Zim's site is today in the specific parameter and the light blue symbolizes the destination to which the site can be improved in a realistic way.
*All the data in the pictures is not the real one in order to maintain the data privacy of the ZIM company
A Little bit about Working with Customers
All the work in close proximity to Zim company employees who were there for questions and help when needed, a source of two-way dialogue of ideas and mutual fertilization. A significant part of a job like this is people, that's the whole idea of improving the user experience. The knowledge of the company's people, combined with our knowledge as UX research people, allowed us to produce a significant report that will now be deployable for tasks in the near and far future to improve and upgrade the existing website.