Background

Client

When a former Director of Wholesale lost his job at a well-known coffee house with multiple locations in California, he decided to launch his own green coffee bean website. When he and I met, I learned that he had fewer people visiting his website, buying green coffee beans, & returning to buy more coffee beans than he wanted to admit. 

Problem

At the time, he didn’t have a unique value proposition or a primary target audience such as a home coffee roaster or a commercial roaster (e.g., who sells wholesale, directly to a cafe, or directly to customers).

Goal

Identify potential customers’ needs, goals, motivations, & behaviors to better serve his customers and ultimately to increase sales revenue.

Recruited & Interviewed Coffee Roasters

Developed a Screener Survey

I developed a survey to find coffee roasters who differed by age, gender, location (in the U.S.), number of years that they had roasted coffee, average number of pounds of green coffee beans purchased and roasted each month, and could describe their most recent coffee roasting experience articulately (which meant that they shared more than a few words in a screener survey). 

I pre-tested this survey, and posted this survey to a few coffee roasting Facebook groups.

Of those who started the screener survey, 40 completed it and were not screened out. 91% were male and 9% were female. Respondents ranged in age from 25-65+ years of age, and lived throughout the United States.

Interview Process

After designing and piloting my user interview guide, I conducted six 30-minute interviews by Zoom, Skype or phone. Almost every person I interviewed wanted to continue discussing coffee roasting beyond the 30 minutes.

“Some [online coffee bean shops] seem more geared for the commercial roaster so I avoid those." -Matt S.

“I want to feel like the website is meeting me where I’m at.” -Ben W.

Recommendation 1: Identify one target group and help them feel like your website is designed for them

"I simply don't have the markup to buy beans at $6+ for a blend, roast & mark up."-Jason J.

“Sometimes I buy from Slack Bag for myself, but it's harder for me to re-sell it because it's expensive.” - Paul T.

Recommendation 2: Offer larger bags of green coffee beans & volumetric pricing (ideally $4-5/lb) for commercial roasters.

“I really trust the roast masters and their cupping analysis on the website. That’s everything." -Jason J.

"Slack Bag has 3 to 4 Ethiopians on the website and with different prices but there’s no cupping scores to differentiate if it’s worth extra money to get the more expensive ones.” - Paul T.

Recommendation 3: Prioritize cupping notes & cupping scores because commercial roasters & more knowledgeable home roasters focus more on these concepts.

*Similar to a wine tasting, cuppers (professional coffee roasters) taste coffee and describe its quality via cupping notes.

**During a coffee tasting, cuppers rate 10 categories (e.g., fragrance/aroma, flavor, body, acidity and balance) on a scale of 1 to 10. These are then added up to create the cupping score. 

“The special that Slack Bag offered ($20 off if you spend $100) got me to try Slack Bag initially.” -Paul T.

Recommendation 4: Highlight new offerings & specials on your website & via newsletters & social media (especially Instagram) to entice new & returning customers to your website.

"[I] look for the story behind the coffee to see if there’s anything interesting or unique about how they’re growing the coffee or drying it." - Matt S.

“I like to look at the pictures, because it makes it feel more personal to me." - Dan W.

Recommendation 5: Offer more personalized opportunities for customers to learn (e.g., 1:1 or small group video sessions) & share more photos of farms & farmers.

Developed Personas

I used the affinity map above to develop two personas for this project: a home roaster and a commercial roaster.

Revised Prioritized Recommendations

After my presentation to the founder, we met to review all 30+ of my recommendations, and used Miro to prioritize them in a feasibility-impact matrix. The recommendations in the top right of the quadrant are those ideas that the founder determined would have the greatest impact and highest feasibility.

IMPACT: Doubled Number of New Customers, Average Amount Per Order & Monthly Sales & Quintupled Number of Starter Kits Sold

By implementing the following four changes between Sept. to early Oct. 2020: 

• focusing on one main target audience, 

• highlighting free shipping on orders over $50 on the home page, 

• placing the starter green coffee bean kit on the home page, and 

• offering larger bags of beans and volumetric pricing, 

his company doubled the number of new customers, the average amount per order, and monthly sales, and he sold 5 green coffee bean starter kits in Oct. compared to 1 in Aug. and Sept. 

Limitations & Lessons Learned

Increase stakeholder engagement earlier in the project.

Though I invited the founder to participate in reviewing recommendations and determining their feasibility and impact, I think he would have felt more ownership of our data if I had invited him to observe interviews and ask questions at the end of each interview.

People often say one thing but do another.

I asked interviewees to walk me through their current online coffee bean vendor, but did not observe all interviewees due to a lack of time or their discomfort with technology. This meant that some people told me what they do rather than show me. There is inherent bias in people describing what I typically do rather than showing what I typically do. In the future, I’d make sure to watch how people buy coffee from their current vendors.

The amount of average monthly sales doubling is due to UX changes but it’s less clear if the other impacts are from a paid ad campaign in Aug. 2020 or the UX changes.

I plan to review Google analytics to see if I can determine whether new customers came from a paid ad campaign or more organically via search, social media, or another avenue. In future, I would have asked for information about the Google Ad campaign earlier in the project.

I interviewed one woman due to the very small number of women who responded to the screener survey.

I likely was not able to identify whether women’s opinions, needs, goals, behaviors, etc. differed from their male coffee roasting counterparts. If feasible in future, I will try different ways to engage more women to complete my screener survey. This might mean leaving it open for a longer period of time or seeking other ways to encourage women to complete the screener survey.

I only spoke with two commercial roasters.

I interviewed one roaster who is trying to get his business off of the ground, and one who is a struggling cafe owner. I ultimately interviewed more home roasters than commercial roasters based on my knowledge of the business. However, I think there might have been value in speaking with at least one more commercial roaster to ensure that the two commercial roasters that I interviewed were not outliers.

Next Steps

I plan to review the website’s Google Analytics to see if I can determine whether the founder’s clients are visiting his website due to the paid ad campaign or if they’re coming from a Google search or social media. I hope to reconnect with the founder who is continuing to track some metrics (e.g., total sales per month, number of new and returning customers, and average value of orders), and I plan to ask him how we might update or revise the personas to make them more valuable to him. I will also follow up to see if the founder can obtain the amount of sales from customers who buy more than $50 versus sales from customers who buy less than $50. I hope to understand if noting that customers get free shipping on the home page with orders over $50 has affected his sales, number of customers returning, etc.