Reckitt Benckiser
UX design: DTC's first moment of truth

With consumers turning to online for more and more of their purchases, there’s a renewed emphasis on the brand experience of receiving products through the post.

Client

Reckitt Benckiser

Services

Digital Design, Experience & Service Design

Methods

In-home ethnography, Qualitative UX




The popularity of unboxing videos demonstrates the importance of the new first moment of truth

A strong experience at this new ‘first moment of truth’ can engender strong brand affinity; a poor one can break it. It’s become such an important part of the brand experience that unboxing videos garner millions of views.

So what makes for a great branded experience for consumers when they receive products through the mail?

That was the challenge that long term partner Reckitt Benckiser approached us with. Through in depth ethnographic consumer studies, we worked to understand each step of the experience.

Every step of the journey

To understand how your brands perform in this channel, you need to ‘unpack’ each step of the journey.

The online experience isn’t just about how your pack looks there: it’s about how the brand lives and breathes there, and how it begins to ramp up anticipation for the next phase

Using wearable cameras, we experience consumers’ opening process first-hand, and capture the emotion using our Packaging Pulse Test

In the absence of a physical store, brands like sexual wellness brand Lelo have learnt how to make their packaging work hard for them

Our 10 step 'Ring of Engagement' explores how brands need to behave throughout the DTC consumer journey

That included the UX with the brand online, and then how shipping design needs to perform for consumers, providing strategic thinking on how ‘Ship In Own Container’ (SIOC) bespoke packaging can add value, as well as forensic detail on how each stage of the opening journey.

The output brought the challenge to life for the client team, helping them understand how their brands perform through this channel, how they might begin to build in extra value for parts of their portfolio, and even how strong SIOC packs can make brand ambassadors of consumers.

The output helped inform our Ring of Engagement model for Direct-to-Consumer (DTC), which explores what brands need to think about at each stage of the process.

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