Scalable product innovation for B2B and B2C auto parts sales

We developed the strategy and design of two innovative auto-parts–sales products: a VIN Scan app and a consumer-facing auto parts e-commerce site. The strategy and design of these products allow Aftermarket Auto Part Alliance (AAPA) to not only improve the sales and business experience of their current customers, but they also serve as scalable software solutions that retailers within AAPA can re-purpose for their own businesses.

Summary

The Problem

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How We Helped

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The Outcomes

How we Helped

UX/UI Design + Research

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Development

Gallery

Client Review

Background

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of e-commerce solutions for an auto parts company. We provide technology, marketing, and product services for a group of distributors in North America and China, and we offer options like e-commerce and supply chain integration, as well as a number of marketing solutions.

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Opportunity / Challenge

What challenge were you trying to address with Praxent?

We were looking for UX design expertise. We felt like our own shop was lacking in ability to implement an effective user experience, so we wanted to augment our resources in order to tackle some important projects in our pipeline.

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Solution

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired them to help us with a new B2C commerce site. It’s a hybrid of our existing services and some new ones we built from the ground up, and it will also enjoy many of our existing backend integrations.

We divided this project into frontend/backend segments, and Praxent assisted with UX on the frontend so we could ensure that we weren’t leaning too heavily on older services we’d already deployed. This project used the Greenfield platform, and it needed to walk through four or five user journeys, e.g. arriving at the store, and then shopping for, searching for, or purchasing a product. Praxent’s job was to create that experience for our site. We’re still in the process of developing it now.

What is the team composition?

I have a project manager, and then the other members of their team switch in and out at different phases of the project. Normally there’s one or two of them helping out at a time.

How did you come to work with Praxent?

I did a bit of web searching, but I live in Austin and my network here contains quite a few strong companies that do a lot of this work, so I asked for personal recommendations. I was interested in US-based companies, preferably local, and I received three good candidates. After meeting with Praxent’s managing partner, I felt like it was a good fit and we moved forward from there.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent somewhere between $50,000–$100,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in August 2017 and our partnership is ongoing.

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Results & Feedback

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The project isn’t finished yet, but one of the things they did was help revise the checkout process on our new site.  We debated it quite a bit, and I was both impressed and surprised by the richness of their discussion regarding specific implementation styles. I thought I knew my way around those UX areas pretty well, but Praxent brought a depth of understanding and an ability to tactfully discuss the tradeoffs of different approaches. They really helped us clarify our thinking and led us to the right choices for our particular UX.

We also set two deadlines in 2017 for Praxent to have sandbox pages ready to present at our stakeholders’ meetings, and not only did they meet both of those delivery milestones, their work helped us sell our design approach to our stakeholders. Prior to those meetings, there’d been some question as to whether our in-house team could produce this new website since software design isn’t our specialty. We were able to demonstrate not only that our guys had what it takes, but also that we knew how to bring in a strong collaborative partner who helped us make robust advances to our products.

How did Praxent perform from a project management standpoint?

Their productivity really impressed me. They check in with us regularly and they keep up with granular details like the function or story point. They’ve also done a great job meeting specific objectives as we march through the design iterations. Everybody on their staff has been on point.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m very happy with the quality and completeness of their deliverables. We’re asking for developer-ready components and content, and they didn’t just provide wireframes, but products that were finished and ready to code.

I’m also pleased with the overall project management. It’s easy to see how well we’re doing and they maintain a good pace. In fact, they push us. When you offload something like this, it’s ordinarily a challenge to keep that external team fed and ready for the next project, but in this case, we had to work hard to match their ability to produce. It’s a nice problem to have.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Praxent is able to quickly digest what we give them and start making products that meet our requirements, so I would recommend being thoroughly prepared ahead of time in terms of your goals and your schedule. They’re highly active, communicative partners, and we didn’t have all of our UX plans decided ahead of time, so keeping pace with the decision-making was a challenge sometimes. We didn’t outsource that part of the process as much as we could have.