Leifheit: 3 Months of UX Support Leads to 255% Increase in Sales

This article was reviewed and updated on August 18th, 2023

One of the first steps in this collaboration with Leifheit was the technical takeover of the project from another supplier and preparing the project for further development and optimisation.

Thanks to e-point’s UX initiative, Leifheit experienced a significant rise in online sales over 3 months.

Optimizing the online store for UX

Our goal was to enhance the purchasing experience for Leifheit’s online customers. The key measure of success was an increased conversion rate and sales volume.

Previously, Leifheit's e-store had never undergone any major visual or functional adjustments towards streamlining the customer journey. There were many user experience problems – particularly the unfriendly and slow-moving cart-to-checkout process.

At e-point, our first step was to define the problems and understand how users actually conducted their e-store visits. We employed Hotjar, Full Story, and other tools to study user sessions. By applying a heatmap and conversion funnels, we learned which places and functions caused most problems for users.

After this initial research had been completed, we were ready to redesign the service so that it could generate more profit. Because we needed to move quickly, we did not interfere with the existing visual style of Leifheit.pl. We focused on functions, making use of the existing elements, typography, and color styles.

UX design sprints and fast changes

The entire process was scheduled in 3 monthly sprints. Each sprint revolved around one core focus area: cart and checkout, customer journey from category to product, and navigation.

We singled out these three areas because they were the most troublesome for users. They also represented key aspects of any purchase.

For each of the areas, a list of recommended UX changes was prepared. In cooperation with the client and the technical team, we identified priorities using the widely-recognized MoSCoW method.

The most vital changes we made were:

• Changing the checkout from one long step (including page reloading) to a series of short, simple steps with a progress indicator.
• Introducing a minimized purchasing process layout that allowed the user to focus on progressing towards conversion without stoppages. This included implementing a visually stronger Buy Box on the product site. 
• Changing the product page template from a three-column to a four-column layout.  This allowed laptop users to view more products without going to subsequent pages. 
• Visually simplifying site navigation, which previously had taken up about 20% of the screen.

Impacts

In addition to the sales increase mentioned above, this series of quick changes resulted in substantially increased key indicators:

• Checkout conversion (progressing from the cart to completing checkout) increased by 218%.
• Cart abandonments fell to 59% (the market standard for this product category is 69%).
• From July to October (when changes were implemented), conversion grew by 30%.

These changes constitute the first stage of enhancements scheduled for Leifheit. Their mobile channel still has room for improvement, particularly because it is slowly becoming the most important channel for consumers.

When we started collaborating, our online store had been operating for over a year. We knew things were not perfect, yet it was only the thorough analysis performed by the e-point design team that allowed us to identify the problem centers. Most importantly, we received rational recommendations on what needed to be improved and in what order to achieve maximum effects - says Katarzyna Bronowska, E-commerce & Marketing Manager in Leifheit Polska sp. z o.o.