Ford's TruckHub
Leading Ford into a new era of e-commerce.
My role
Lead product designer
Discovery research
Prototyping
Experiment planning
Iterative design
Remote user testing
My team
1 Product Owner
1 Project Manager
1 Product Designer
Timeline
3 months
Initial challenge
Ford's truck team brought on FordLabs to create an e-commerce marketplace selling DIY kits to truck owners. The assumption was that since truck owners are handy people, Ford can make a profit selling cheap truck accessories that they can put together themselves. Think PVC bike racks, wooden bed dividers, etc.
Validate the assumptions
I quickly mocked up a Google Shopping page to evaluate which DIY products truck owners would be likely to purchase. I standardized the pricing, materials, and products to eliminate variability in the purchase decision and surveyed truck owners.
Purpose: See if truck owners are even interested in DIY kits for purchase.
Result: Unanimous rejection. Truck owners continuously expressed that the kits would be “janky.” They didn't want to accessorize their trucks with cheap, homemade parts. They preferred to spend more money on robust, enduring products.
Pivot through ambiguity
Though we invalidated the initial assumption, in the process we discovered that truck owners are highly engaged in online communities.They achieve a sense of community by sharing the upgrades on their trucks and receiving inspiration from others.
User research for problem discovery:
Moderated interviews: Helped us learn that Ford truck owners love seeing what other truck owners are doing to their trucks. They would want to purchase accessories from Ford but the website is difficult to use.
Surveys: Gave us quantitative validation that truck owners would in fact be interested in Ford engaging more with the truck community.
Prototype testing: Helped us quickly iterate towards our solution to bring together commerce and community to improve Ford's conversion rate.
New problem discovered
There are dozens of F-150 forums with thousands of daily users, yet Ford has no engagement with its truck owners after the point-of-sale, and it is severely outsold in F-150 accessories.
Ford's e-commerce metrics at the project's start:
12+
Clicks to checkout
.025%
Conversion rate
80%
Bounce rate
Introducing TruckHub: A grassroots platform for truck owners to learn, share, and shop.
Rapid experimentation on the UI:
Increased touch points between Ford and truck customers:
Impact:
78%
Reduction in bounce rate
$24k
Revenue in 4 weeks
92%
User generated content
Moving forward
The TruckHub project was such a huge success that the Ford Performance Parts team invested to stand up a team and revamp their site with the same model of bringing together community and commerce. Here are their stats:
"The mission of TruckHub seems fantastic. It has content by people who actually use these things, not by marketing agencies. So it definitely seems like a very solid community-driven place to learn and talk about trucks."
[Name redacted]
An F-150 owner during user research