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Fresh bouquets with Goquets
A modern approach to ordering beautiful bouquets for your loved ones.
6 minute read
In 2013, I co-founded Goquets (Go-Kays) after winning Startup Weekend Ames. Our mission was to modernize the online flower-ordering experience for customers, making it more convenient and delightful when sending flowers to loved ones.
As a founding team member, I spearheaded product strategy and design. This role involved extensive user and market research. I also led product development, working closely with our development team to bring our vision to life.
Product Strategy
UX Research
UI Design
Technical Project Management
The Problem
The day before Mother's Day in 2012, I realized I hadn't yet bought a gift for my mom. Knowing how much she loved flowers, I decided to send her a bouquet from a major online retailer.
That's when I discovered how terrible the online flower-buying experience could be.
Not only was I forced to choose from an endless gallery of bouquets—despite having no real knowledge about flowers—but they also sent the wrong arrangement at the wrong time. I didn't even realize this until my mom texted me two days later, thanking me for the flowers.
Upon meeting my future co-founder Shawn, I discovered he had a similar experience to mine—he had purchased flowers from a major retailer only to be disappointed by poor customer support, slow delivery times, and limited customization options. This shared frustration prompted us to explore the problem further, aiming to improve and modernize the online flower-ordering experience.
I spearheaded efforts to gather insights through market research, user interviews, surveys, and data analysis to help us validate this as a problem worth solving.
The Market
As of 2015, the US floral industry—particularly the Florists' Transworld Delivery (FTD), a floral wire service—was thriving. FTD boasted an impressive network of over 25,000 florists nationwide. The industry generated $13 billion in annual sales, with online sales steadily increasing to $4 billion (2% year-over-year growth). This trend highlighted the growing preference for convenient, digital flower-ordering experiences.
We grouped the competition into three categories:
The Big Guys: 1-800-flowers, ProFlowers, FTD
Startups: The Bouqs, BloomThat, BloomNation
Brick & Mortar: Your friendly neighborhood florist
We conducted a competitive analysis and came away with the following insights:
Customer Research
We conducted 50 user interviews with people who had previously ordered flowers from major retailers. Our questions focused on:
Wants: What was their knowledge of flowers before ordering? Did they choose flowers to fulfill an obligation or to create a personalized gift?
Needs: What motivated them to select flowers as a gift? How satisfied were they with the ordering process?
Expectations: What did they anticipate from their online flower order? Did the major retailer meet these expectations?
After meeting with dozens of florists and buyers and reviewing potential competitive offerings in the market, we identified several key findings in buyer behaviors
From there, we developed User Personas based on these customer segments to focus our efforts on providing the best individualized experience.
Fig: Customer Personas
We also built a comprehensive customer journey map, allowing us to gain valuable insights from our users’ perspectives, identify potential opportunities, and address any weaknesses within our product.
Fig: Customer Journey
I started creating the information architecture and low-fi concepts for primary use cases. Digging into the purchasing and fulfillment workflows allowed us to better understand which scenarios to prioritize as well as what data we'd need to include.
Figs: Workflows
Figs: Primary Use Cases
After having a go-ahead from the Product Manager, developers, and Stakeholders on the mockups, we began to conduct usability tests with the low-fidelity mockups. Once we had confidence in the design, we began digitalizing designs.
These wireframes guided discussions on our product roadmap and marketing strategy. Refining and reviewing the wireframes, I proceeded to develop high-fidelity responsive prototypes to test with potential customers.
Defining Success
Before launch, we drafted a list of product metrics we wanted to keep an eye on that answered a few key questions:
Customer Satisfaction Score: Did customers find our product and customer service satisfactory compared to our competitors?
Florist Satisfaction Score: Were florists satisfied with receiving orders via Goquets?
Number of Repeat Orders per Customer: Would at least 50% of customers make a repeat purchase within the initial six months?
By answering these questions, our intention was to provide us with a data-driven foundation for making informed design decisions in the future.
Once we completed the initial scope of features, we launched the service on top of Shopify, which not only provided a backend that allowed us to manage orders efficiently, but also provided user insights as we continued to iterate throughout the first year of launch.
Our findings became the foundation for Goquets, where we aimed to simplify the bouquet selection process. Through filters based on event types, color preferences, flower types, and budgets, we provide a more intuitive and personalized experience. Goquets is positioned to excel by catering to customers' needs and offering a unique and user-friendly approach in the online flower market.
With Goquets, we identified the following opportunities to provide a cleaner, more efficient ordering process for the end user while also granting florists more creative freedom:
Demo
What's Next
After a few design iterations and user testing, we established our initial product roadmap and prioritized features based on their impact and effort.
Once we completed the initial scope of features, we launched the service on top of Shopify, which not only provided a backend that allowed us to manage orders efficiently, but also provided user insights as we continued to iterate throughout the first year of launch.
Fig: Customer Photos and Testimonials
I've always said that Goquets served as a sort of MBA for me–a hands-on crash course in entrepreneurship. I learned invaluable lessons while juggling multiple roles – from co-founder to product manager to designer – always striving to harmonize our creative vision with practical business needs.
A few lessons learned:
User-Centric Approach: By prioritizing our customers' needs and identifying their pain points, particularly among younger demographics, we were able to simplify and streamline the flower-ordering experience.
Data-Driven Decision Making: Prior to launch, we set clear metrics to gauge performance. In tracking customer and florist satisfaction, along with repeat purchase rates, we were able to gain crucial insights that continued to refine our product roadmap.
Collaborative Development: Close collaboration among product, design, and development teams was crucial for creating a seamless user experience. By fostering open dialogue and iterative testing, we honed our product to exceed user expectations.