Toyo Tire Finder Usability Study & Redesign

Toyo Tires’ responsive website was redesigned by GLG in 2016. As part of a 15-person team of managers, UX and visual designers and developers, I was responsible for the user experience of the website. Tire Finder is a heavily used tool on the Toyo website to help consumers find the right tires for their vehicle. Tire dealers like Les Schwab also use the tool to look up tires for their customers.

The Challenge

After we launched the site, analytics data revealed that the tool was being abandoned mid-way and about 30% of the users never got to the tire results page. I conducted a usability study to understand the problems that users were facing while using the tool to look for tires. The results from the study formed the basis for the redesign of the tire finder experience.

Usability Study

Goals

I designed and conducted a task-oriented usability study with these goals in mind:

• Evaluating the existing experience to identify the most pressing issues.
• Getting end user feedback to understand what aspects of the current design work well and what needs improvement.
• Gathering qualitative insights to improve the design

Methodology

I moderated 30 min, one-on-one sessions with 6 car enthusiasts, 6 consumers and 3 dealers.

I started with the participants answering a few pre-test questions to understand the participant’s experience with researching tires online. With these questions I wanted to understand how easy or difficult does the participant anticipate the task to be. The questionnaire was followed by the usability tasks, where I asked the participants to search for specific tires for their vehicle, and finally fill out a post-test questionnaire to understand the issues they faced. I used Lookback to record the sessions.

Insights from the field

I rated the usability issues by frequency (high, moderate, low) and severity (1-high impact, 2-moderate impact and 3-low impact). Top findings included:

1. Tire data was confusing and difficult to read
2. Pagination made making a selection cumbersome
3. Participants did not understand why they were seeing plus size tires along with originals
4. Pinned data on results page was not helpful and occupied prime real estate
5. Scrolling fatigue on mobile

 

Gaining a shared understanding

I presented the findings to our internal teams and Toyo stakeholders. I made sure we collectively understand the uncovered issues. I included lookback videos and quotes from participants to help everyone understand whats working and not working for the users. Some of the issues were a very big surprise for the stakeholders.

 

 

Redesigning the experience

Let the user choose a search option

The usability test revealed that the assumption that most users search by vehicle was wrong. Search by vehicle was the default way to search for tires in the old design. Other search options were available in tabs, but were not very obvious. The study revealed that 90% of car enthusiasts and dealer wanted to search by size or just browse all tire options.

Make data easy to understand 

I added visual information related to technical terms on every screen, so the users can understand technical terms like ‘trim’ or know how to read a tire size. I got rid of the pagination, so all data is displayed in every step.

Display search results for original tire size 

The search results showed original tire size along with plus size tires. If original tire size (O. E.) was unavailable, +0 or plus size tires were shown. From the study we found that many users did not get understand that +0 was the same wheel size with a different width, and it will work as a replacement for original tires. We called it out in the new design. I introduced a filter for plus sizing, so users see it only if they are interested in plus sizes.

I worked with a visual designer to decrease the size of every tire results, to reduce scrolling fatigue and show only what’s important.

Indicate if a tire fits user’s vehicle in the browsing experience

We initially did not cookie the search, but the study revealed that users at times choose to browse tires, instead of using the tire finder or simply return after a few days and find it frustrating that they have to do the search again. We added the cookie for search and displayed if a tire fits their vehicle in the tire list pages. That made the browsing experience simple and reduced the number of steps needed to find a perfect fit.

Impact

When the new design of the tire finder launched, usage went up by 58%. Abandonment rate went down drastically. It is hard to track how the redesign impacted Toyo’s bottom line, as the tire are not sold online and users have to get in touch with dealers to buy the product.