Gertens
Overview
Gertens is Minnesota's destination garden center and home to Minnesota’s largest selection of plants, trees, & shrubs. For many Gertens is more than a garden center. It's a family tradition. For over 100 years Gertens has provided the selection and expertise big box stores simply cannot match.
Project Objectives
Gertens was looking for a Magento partner who could help create a better experience for online customers. Below was a list of their objectives.
- Rebuild on an updated version of Magento 2
- Utilize a custom integration with Epicor
- Create a new, stable, and trusted hosting environment
- Improve critical functionalities such as site search
- Release a fast, customer focused front-end
Discovery and research
A kickoff meeting with the web team provided valuable business and strategy insights and a general understanding of Gertens customer. To hear more perspective we conducted onsite employee interviews of each department.
Understanding customer behavior
We conducted a card sorting exercise utilizing Gertens current navigation structure to gather customer feedback. With 55 participants – both experienced and inexperienced gardeners – our quantitive data showed a lack of consensus on product categorization. This data allowed us to form hypothesis to how future navigation could better serve customers.
Key takeaway – Because Gertens was relying on four categories, it created a sense of ambiguity for users.
Card sorting results
Testing our proposed navigation
After presenting a new navigation to Gertens we wanted to test it with customers. To test our new navigation structure we conducted tree testing. We had 90 participants complete the test with an average overall success score of 86% and a 91% average overall directness score. The results gave clarity and confidence to both teams in our new direction.
Task result example
"Gathering feedback from real customers through card sorting gave clarity to the Gertens on how their navigation was performing. This data allowed us to reimagine the navigation to better align with how customers categorized products."
Visually our goal for Gertens was to create a homepage that reflected a customers in-store experience. A Minnesota tradition with a colorful selection of plants and a team of experts there with you every step of the way.