How PlaceMakers doubled sales after using UXCam

The challenge

The PlaceMakers app was launched a month after lockdowns began in New Zealand in 2020. The construction materials supplier immediately felt the impact the pandemic had on supply chains, especially in the construction industry. 

This, coupled with a surge in demand for more construction work to go ahead, posed a substantial issue for PlaceMakers when it came to keeping stock levels updated on their app. 

UXCam’s Session Replay feature clearly showed that users were scrolling past materials with the Constrained Products tag, even though it perfectly matched their search intent and would be back in stock shortly.

Blake Johnson

Product Owner

Materials were selling out faster than their app could update the stock levels. Customers were able to add a product to their basket, but by the time they got to the checkout, the item was displayed as unavailable. 

The Product Owner didn’t want to frustrate the users any further and hypothesized that they would benefit from knowing an item wouldn’t be available upfront before adding it to their basket. To try and solve this, they built a feature called Constrained Products.

After watching just a few Session Replays and Heatmaps they discovered that their messaging for constrained products was too strong

Blake Johnson

Product Owner

Essentially, Constrained Products was a tag on all materials under a certain stock level that clearly showed the material wasn’t currently available to order. However, when the team had a look at how users were responding to this new feature, they saw that sales were down by 80% since its release. 

The solution

After watching just a few Session Replays and Heatmaps they discovered that their messaging for constrained products was too strong. With red and bold lettering communicating the product wasn’t available to order, users stopped purchasing in advance for future deliveries. 

UXCam’s Session Replay feature clearly showed that users were scrolling past materials with the Constrained Products tag, even though it perfectly matched their search intent and would be back in stock shortly.

“When we added [Constrained Products] we didn’t pay much attention to the UX side of the message and what we saw is that orders from April [compared to March] were down 80%.”

The product team took action after getting those insights. They revamped the design of Constrained Products with a more positive approach, communicating to users that the product is available but delivery may take slightly longer.  

Once that was implemented, the team checked in with UXCam again and saw that sales hadn’t just recovered from before – they had doubled.

Blake Johnson

Product Owner

Without UXCam it would have taken PlaceMakers weeks or even months to identify and solve the issue. They would have had to track down real-life customers and ask them about their experience with the app. That would have meant annoying users and potentially losing even more sales and loyal users. With UXCam the PlaceMakers product team was able to see how their customers were using the app, pinpoint the issue, find a solution, and test it, all within a 3-day period. 

What’s next

Thanks to a combination of Heatmaps and Session Replay the team solved a huge issue affecting the revenue stream. PlaceMakers are continuously looking for new insights to help them make better-informed decisions on UX Design and new feature releases.