The Challenge

Mars Fry Online (MarsFry.com) is an ecommerce business-to-consumer retailer (B2C) focused on providing exceptional user experience and custom fishing rods. Its parent company, Mars Fry LLC., has operated as a brick-and-mortar store for 6 years, providing custom fishing rods to local San Diegans, with a high level of service. Though they are still operational, the pandemic has caused a dramatic decline in sales as most of their sales were done at their in-person showroom, which is currently closed to the public.

From an elevated view, the fishing and hunting industry is projected to grow this year, as it did last year, however for companies to take advantage of this growth they must ensure uninterrupted services under varying pandemic restrictions. As such, Mars Fry is looking to expand its reach and save the company by providing its bespoke fishing rods, fully online, while maintaining a high level of user and customer experience.

Goals and Objectives

The primary goal is to save the business. Mars Fry has seen a dramatic drop in sales and will need at least 60% of their brick-and mortar sales numbers to stay operational. To succeed, the website should:

• Convert 20% of current brick-and-mortar customer base to online customers
• Increase new consumer base to 50% of original brick-and-mortar numbers
• Increase Customer Lifetime Value by 10% in first year
• Optimize customer acquisition cost

These goals are very readily accessible as Mars Fry has operated as a boutique luxury service with a high profit margin. The product will likely have to make a slight reduction in retail price, as much of the perceived value was in the in-person salesmanship, therefore, sales numbers will have to increase to make up for the decrease in price. This is also highly attainable as Mars Fry has historically measured its success in dozens of product sales per week. Increasing the sales number percentage should conversely allow for a proportional decrease in retail price.

Approach

At a minimum, the website must provide a user experience where a novice fisherman can comfortably customize a fishing rod to their specifications and needs, without any previous product knowledge. By effectively communicating good usability, the objective is to increase new visitor conversion and increase repeat customer rates over those of the brick-and-mortar store. Furthermore, the experience strives to offer all the same customization options that would be available during an in-person consult, as the user expects the product offering to be comparable.

In addition to offering the fully bespoke experience the company has built its reputation on, Mars Fry would introduce a few new product lines that focus on the good, better, best model. In this model, the level of customization would increase with the product price/level. By expanding the product line to different price points, Mars Fry broadens its customer base to groups that were previously priced out.

The color scheme broadens the companies target demographic from the previous, “rugged male hunter,” aged 40-65, to a more youthful color scheme that is inclusive to other genders, and all levels of fisherman.

Mobile browsing now accounts for the majority of web traffic, therefore designing a Mobile First interface not only targets a broader audience, but it also allows for the use of more mobile-friendly interactions and dynamic animations.

Usability testing was conducted on the prototype design, through which the design was improved to include the use of tooltips that would offer the user additional information about the product, based on the part of the customization process the user was in. Doing so measurably improved usability scores.