Case Study
B2B E-Commerce UX Research
Investigating Stakeholders Journeys and Pain Points to improve the ICAO Store Experience
Problem & Context
When the e-commerce team noticed low mobile engagement and limited adoption of their subscription service, they requested a research initiative to improve the mobile experience and optimize the navigation and subscription features.
To begin, I conducted in-depth stakeholder interviews to uncover the underlying issues and align on measurable objectives. This process helped refine the project goals to:
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Expand overall sales
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Explore opportunities for bundled subscriptions
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Increase mobile traffic and accessibility
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Reduce the support load on the sales inbox team
My Role
UX Researcher and Design Consultant
Methods
Survey
Semi Structured Interviews
Tree Testing
Usability Test
Customer Support Email Analysis
Heuristic Evaluation
Team
Developer, Business Analyst, Head of eCommerce Unit
Timeline
18 weeks
To achieve these objectives, I designed an exploratory research approach guided by three key questions:
1.
2.
3.
What challenges do users face when searching for products and completing purchases?
What barriers prevent customers from adopting the bundled subscription model?
What factors contribute to low traffic on the mobile version of the website?
Research Process
The research was iterative and guided by the three core questions, with methods refined at each stage to align with business goals and user needs.
Research Methods Diagram
Discovery
I began by conducting semi-structured interviews with internal stakeholders to understand organizational priorities and challenges. A short survey on the website provided demographic insights and helped recruit participants for subsequent studies. I also analyzed Google Analytics data to identify key audience segments and behavioural patterns. In addition, I examined received emails by customers to uncover user needs. Together, these methods clarified who the ICAO Store users were, revealed internal and external pain points, and shaped the initial research hypotheses.
Exploration
Building on these insights, I conducted user interviews, moderated mobile usability tests and unmoderated tree testing to explore how customers searched for products, interacted with the navigation, and understood subscription needs. This phase revealed critical usability barriers and opportunities to simplify the mobile journey.
Synthesis
Finally, I organized findings through affinity mapping, personas, and journey maps, translating patterns into actionable insights.
Desktop users account for almost 70% of overall traffic.
Desktop users are 3.5× more likely to complete a purchase than mobile users than mobile users.
User roles include Flight and Airport Operations, Aviation Safety, Engineering, and Training.
Only 2.7% of all visitors added items to their basket.
Analysis of Survey and Google Analytics Data
The analysis of survey responses and Google Analytics data provided a clear view of customer demographics, audience segments, and behaviour patterns. It also helped me to identify patterns in users behaviours and possible intentions, which informed the design of tasks for other research activities, such as usability testing and persona development.
The findings indicated possible issues in the mobile browsing and checkout processes, as well as navigation issues that hindered product discoverability and findability.
Methods
Email Communications’ Analysis
An in-depth analysis of the sales inbox revealed recurring challenges that provided valuable insights into users' needs and frustrations. Many users had difficulty understanding the status of their purchases, locating or downloading digital files, and accessing documents with their current credentials. Others sought confirmation of their payments or clearer information about bundles and subscription models. Common issues also included concerns related to training exams, such as self-paced course expirations and access to the portal. These themes later guided the development of usability testing and tree testing, and informed recommendations for improving communication and user touchpoint.
Tree Testing
By incorporating unmoderated tree test, I was able to evaluate findability, specifically examine whether users could locate key resources such as publications, training materials, and bundles within the current menu structure. The results highlighted navigation challenges:
17%
of participants were able to locate the assigned publication, but not directly.
6%
successfully found the training bundle.
50%
searched for the Annexes bundle under the right tab.
35%
identified the actual subscription bundle, and none found it through a direct path.
Mobile Usability Test
During usability testing, I observed how customers interacted with the mobile website. This revealed challenges in navigation, pain points, and accessibility issues. The sessions provided valuable insights into users’ expectations and emotional responses as they completed key tasks, such as logging into their accounts, locating a publication, and finding information about multi-user licenses.
Semi-Structured Interviews
To understand external stakeholders experiences, thoughts, and emotions throughout the purchase journey, I conducted exploratory semi-structured interviews. The conversations focused on their roles and responsibilities, the triggers for their purchasing needs, and the motivations behind their decisions. I also identified key touchpoint, examined challenges faced on the website and after purchase, and explored opportunities related to mobile use and subscription bundle awareness.
The findings revealed that customers often feel a lack of control over their purchasing process and that correcting mistakes is difficult. The current subscription model on the website also lacks clarity, leading to confusion about its benefits and conditions. Additionally, most participants prefer using the desktop version, as they rely on it for business-related activities that require reading, verifying details, and ensuring accuracy before completing a purchase.
Heuristic Evaluation
Finally, I conducted a heuristic evaluation to assess the website's overall usability, navigation, and accessibility. The analysis focused on how clearly the system communicates its status, whether users can easily understand the labels and terminology, and how much control they have when correcting errors or navigating through the site. I also examined opportunities for personalization and efficiency, as well as the balance between aesthetic and minimalist design, ensuring that both the content and visuals emphasize what is important to users.
This method provided valuable insights that guided clear, actionable recommendations to enhance both the interface and the user experience.
Insights
You can’t use what you can’t find”
— Peter Morville
Personas
Customer Journey
ICAO Store Customers’ Journey
Themes
After analyzing all the research data, I identified patterns and connections across participants’ experiences. This process led to the definition of five key themes that summarize the main insights and opportunities uncovered in the study.
Findability
Users struggled to locate information and resources across the website, they believe that finding key information should be simpler and more intuitive.
Product pages: Customers want details about products, such as sample pages, data timeframes, and tables of contents.
Dashboard: issues to locate items like download links, quotes, receipts, and invoices.
Navigation: Instead of searching by document numbers, users want to be able to find materials by keywords or subjects.
Menu structure: The menu didn’t guide them intuitively, and bundles or related products were easy to overlook.
Usually if I need something to search for, I simply try to imagine which are the best word to type in in the search.”
I don't know where to find this document... it's not on ‘My download’ page.”
Customer Control & Freedom
Users sought greater autonomy and personalization in their experience.
Quotes and subscriptions: The system requires users to manually request quotes, and many expressed interest in a clearer and more flexible subscription model for data products.
Account management: Users cannot choose or modify the username linked to a purchased item. Many organizations also share login credentials internally so multiple team members can access content.
Personalization: They expected tailored recommendations based on their profile and past purchases. When the system failed to recognize their needs, it led to missed opportunities and frustration.
Accessibility and support: Features like a multilingual interface and a chatbot for quick answers were seen as valuable ways to make interactions more efficient and effective.
Role-based access: Purchases were often made by administrative staff, but there was no option to assign access to the actual user, creating confusion and extra support requests.
It would be great to get a notification if a new version of a previously purchased publication is available, ideally before the current expires."
I noticed that subscription was made with his company e-mail address. So we can't use his e-mail address to access these annexes. So I wrote to ICAO sales team."
Mobile Usage
Most customers prefer using desktop computers over mobile devices when navigating the ICAO Store. Because purchases are often work-related, users need to verify product details, review documents, and obtain approvals before checkout—tasks they find easier and more secure on a larger screen.
Navigation and layout: The hamburger menu in the top-left corner was not intuitive for many users during testing, and the sign-in area’s placement on the second level made it harder to locate.
Cross-device continuity: When switching from mobile to desktop, users did not see a clear confirmation that they were logged in. This caused confusion and, in some cases, lost cart items.
Readability and interaction: Small font sizes and limited spacing between icons reduced readability and clickability.
Usability: The “Show password” option on the sign-in page did not function properly, preventing users from confirming their input.
Desktop is more convenient, the screen is larger and the access is more secure.”
I would expect to have the sign-in to be on the first layer... this is confusing."
Status & System Feedback
Users often felt uncertain about what was happening within the system, as feedback and status indicators were inconsistent or missing throughout the experience, making the system feel unpredictable and difficult to trust.
Subscription clarity: users are unaware that access is limited to a single credential or user.
Error messages: prompts for issues are vague, leaving users unsure how to resolve the problem.
Login confirmation: there is no clear visual cue to confirm a successful login.
Order visibility: Users lacked visibility into order status and the next steps after purchase.
Cart feedback: no confirmation when items are added to the cart, and prices are not updated automatically when quantities are changed.
I thought the price was for an organization. It wasn’t until I emailed ICAO that I realized it was for individual price. I don't want to have to e-mail the store in order to get that information.”
Technical & System Issues
Technical limitations and system inconsistencies created major barriers in the customer experience, often preventing users from completing basic tasks smoothly.
Download and access issues: many customers struggled to locate or access their digital products after purchase. In several cases, download links were missing, inactive, or simply didn’t work.
Login difficulties: Users frequently encountered problems logging in, usernames or passwords often failed, preventing access to purchased materials.
Performance and connectivity: in some regions, users reported slow internet speeds affecting site performance. Moreover, digital documents required an active internet connection, limiting offline access.
We need the documents to be ready for us when they are purchased."
Recommendations
Based on the key findings, a series of recommendations were developed to enhance usability, clarity, and overall user experience. These suggestions focus on improving navigation and findability, increasing user control and personalization, clarifying system feedback, resolving technical issues, and optimizing the mobile experience.
Findability
Provide users with clear guidance, feedback, and cues at each stage.
Improve Product Discoverability:
Add tables of contents, data samples, and improve product descriptions and SEO metadata. Include banners suggesting related products, bundles, or required training to increase discoverability.
Enhance Dashboard Navigation:
Make key documents and downloads easier to find, giving users more autonomy and reducing support emails.
Customer Control & Freedom
User control and freedom support autonomy and error recovery, lowering cognitive burden and increasing confidence.
Assign Access at Purchase
Allow customers to assign the intended user’s credentials during checkout for digital Annexes, supporting user control and freedom while reducing post-purchase friction and access-related support requests.
Support Confident Decision-Making at Checkout
Enable real-time payment confirmation or allow users to upload proof of payment during checkout to reduce uncertainty. Additionally, improve shopping cart interactions and the user interface (UI) to enhance user control and freedom. This will make it easier for users to modify their selections, such as language, format, and quantities.
Smooth Cross-Touchpoint Interactions
Address low-level usability barriers at key touchpoints by making product cards fully clickable to support recognition rather than recall, prioritizing recent publications in search results to improve match between system and real-world expectations, and adding a “Keep me logged in” option to reinforce user control and freedom. Complement these improvements with familiar UI patterns, such as an eye icon for password visibility, and structured contact form categories to improve efficiency and reduce avoidable friction for users and internal teams.
Mobile Usage
Mobile users should experience minimal cognitive effort. By prioritizing intuitive and accessible navigation, they can quickly orient themselves.
Support Confident Mobile Browsing
Redesign the mobile header by relocating navigation controls, adding explicit search and user icons, and enhancing menu clarity to address gaps in recognition over recall and in system status visibility. Reinforce feedback by updating the user icon post-login, and improve readability by increasing product title and description font sizes, supporting accessibility and reducing cognitive effort during mobile browsing.
Recommended
Status & system feedback
Ensure users are continuously informed about what the system is doing, and what actions are required next.
Reinforce Feedback in the Purchase Journey:
Introduce a confirmation popup on “Add to Cart” to address gaps in visibility of system status and reduce user uncertainty at a critical decision point in the checkout flow.
Add a notification indicator to the user icon to show account updates.
Before
Recommended
Improve Customers’ Dashboard:
Display real-time status updates and notifications for logged-in users. Add a notification list to the dashboard for recent updates. This tab will display the status of purchases and provide links to available quotes, downloads, and subscription renewals.
Guide Users Through Checkout:
Segmenting the checkout into defined steps and adding a progress indicator directly addresses gaps in visibility of system status, helping users anticipate effort and reducing abandonment during the final stages of purchase.
Refine Email Communication:
Improve UX writing, visual hierarchy, and consistency across all store emails. Keep customers informed at every step, ensure that emails such as “Order under review,” “Payment processing,” and “Your order will be on its way soon,” are delivered throughout the process.
Clarify Licensing Options:
Clearly show license types for bundle products using checkboxes (e.g., single user, 5 users, 10 users), and offer progressive discounts to encourage bulk purchases.
Technical and System Issues
The identified technical issues were surfaced to the engineering and development team to raise awareness of their UX impact and inform prioritization. Although solution design sits with technical specialists, many of the proposed experience improvements contribute to alleviating related friction by strengthening system feedback, access transparency, and journey continuity.
Co-Design & Prioritization
In this final phase, I focused on collaboratively translating research insights into clear and agreed-upon implementation priorities. To help the team determine which actions to prioritize, I facilitated a participatory co-design workshop with key stakeholders after presenting the recommendations.
Outcome of the participatory prioritization workshop
During the workshop, we used a structured prioritization exercise where participants placed each action on a bullseye diagram, designating them from high to low priority based on their perceived impact and urgency. Next, I guided a group discussion to understand the reasoning behind these choices and adjustments were made as needed.
The outcomes of the workshop were documented in the final report, creating a shared and practical roadmap that supported alignment and facilitated the transition from research insights to implementation.