FBN Direct - Case Study
Role: Design Lead
Completed: 2017
Platform: Web
Intro
Generally, FBN Direct is known by many in the farming industry as the Amazon for agricultural products. For much of my time at FBN, my primary project was testing, iterating, and designing this very unique e-commerce experience.
Problem to Solve
Farmers have been in the dark as to whether or not they are paying a fair price for the agricultural products they need to operate their farms. They do not have the information they need to successfully negotiate with local retailers because pricing is regional, bundled with additional services, and adjusted for potential rebates. FBN Direct was created to be a unique e-commerce experience that would provide pricing information, expose farmers to alternative products, and operate on simple pricing structures. The main question was whether or not farmers would be willing to take these major transactions out of their local store and onto the web.
The Starting Point
Now, it’s important to know that many people believed that farmers would not be interested in buying their inputs online. The counter argument was that the large conglomerates in the agriculture industry had pushed farmers to the brink with their pricing, so many folks would be eager to find cheaper alternatives. As a result, FBN needed proof of concept. So, before the e-commerce experience of FBN Direct could be built, the team utilized spreadsheets.
Before I joined, the team put these spreadsheets together to show farmers just how much they could save with alternative products and suppliers. This was not easy to do because in agriculture, prices aren’t listed, and while no one knows what anyone else is paying for a product, they are often led to believe that they are getting the best deal in town. Since folks were hungry for alternatives, they were willing to share their invoices from the prior season and that’s what gave this spreadsheet some validity. We could show farmers just how much they could save by purchasing through FBN. However, some of the impact was being lost in the design.
The Proof of Concept
The new report had four key distinctions from the original design:
It felt more personal with the name, photo, and contact information of the sales rep that was the point of contact for the customer.
The percent savings and the total dollars saved were prominently featured.
Each line item provided its own percent savings in case the farmer could negotiate better deals elsewhere. Part of this project was to arm our customers with the information necessary to get a fair price at any negotiation table.
The products available through FBN were highlighted in blue to let the farmer know that in some cases, they would be purchasing the exact same product, but at other times, they would be purchasing a generic equivalent.
“Over the last year I was able to save $10,000 to $15,000 on my purchases through FBN Direct.”
Digital Product v1
Armed with the knowledge that we could make an impact for our customers, we put together a crude online home for FBN Direct. However, it wasn’t truly a purchasing experience, but instead it was a place to discover products and alternatives, review prices, and compare options.
The transaction would still be completed in-person or over the phone because with farmers taking such substantial purchases to a new company, our customers wanted a face-to-face experience for their first purchase. This price list would allow them to learn more about what we could offer and just how much we could help them save.
This was just the beginning and we knew the product needed to be taken much farther, so it seemed like as good a time as any to collaborate with one of our investors and spend a week with the team at GV conducting a design sprint.
The Design Sprint
Working alongside the team at GV was a great look at a structured way in which to explore the process of idea generation, and so many key concepts were either created or enhanced during that week.
Ultimately, the sprint allowed us to get to a prototype that we could test by the end of the week, which was incredible. But it wasn’t just that we could design and produce a prototype in a week (because the designer really only has Thursday to do this). It was effective because product and engineering could quickly get alignment on what we needed to do and then we could get user feedback on a prototype that took all of those factors into consideration.
The other interesting thing to note is that our concept at the end of the week failed. It tanked. The farmers we showed it to were pretty confused on a number of different aspects of the experience, which was incredibly useful information. A design sprint can get you where you need to go really quickly, but it can also help you avoid very costly mistakes. Our attempt to closely imitate an Amazon experience meant that we were forcing certain design decisions that were irrelevant or unhelpful.
Sprinting Some More
In the weeks that followed, my product manager and I took the sprint mentality to heart. We sat side-by-side, and the whiteboard wall we sat next to was used again and again. We went through new concepts daily, mocked them up, and did it again. We set up calls with FBN members who had purchased from us in the past and got their feedback on the direction we were taking.
It was a really exciting period of collaboration and we made so much improvement to what we were building. It was incredibly gratifying to be able to refer back to concepts we had put together even earlier in the week and realize how much farther we had taken certain concepts in only a few days. Additionally, we ran a mini-sprint one afternoon with members of the engineering team to uncover any insights we might have been missing.
When we checked in with the design team at GV a week or two later, they were blown away by how many fully designed prototypes we had created and tested with users.
Launch of v2
Eventually, we got to the point where we felt ready to launch the fully designed e-commerce experience that would allow farmers to purchase inputs online. There were plenty of aspects of the purchase and delivery that were very complex but needed to appear simple for the user:
Having a favorites list that could double as a list of products previously purchased from FBN or other retailers that farmers could use as a starting point
Including easily accessible label information for complicated products
Starting with the familiar product on the left and offering an obvious product comparison on the right
Showing “Apples to Apples” pricing for products that had the same active ingredient at a different concentration
Presenting Price Transparency for the product in question and comparing the price the user paid to the market average and the best available offer from FBN
Introducing a simple cart and checkout experience
Facilitating both shipping products and allowing for warehouse pickup
Accounting for and documenting Registered Use Permits for particular products
Providing this robust and highly technical product discovery experience in the FBN App
The First Year
At FBN’s annual Farmer2Farmer conference, we were able to show our members just how big of an impact the new FBN Direct had made.
“We did save $17,000 last year. That’s about 50% price reduction compared to what we could buy it locally for.”
With the first year of self-service on the product, we completed over 2,300 deliveries to farming enterprises, stocked over 400 products, and saved farms as much as $120,000 on their input purchases for the upcoming season.
The opportunity to make such a substantive impact of family businesses throughout the country made it an incredibly fulfilling project to be a part of.