Lenskart App Review!
For those who don’t know what Lenskart does( it’s a pretty rare scenario after the oil Derek of money they have spent on advertising), it’s an eye-wear company which aims to change people’s mindset and get them to accept online stores as an alternative way of purchasing. They have been pretty successful in the same and have already taken the next step with an omnichannel approach by including online, Brick & mortar shops and home visits by an optometrist on motorbikes.
Lenskart claims to get around 50 percent of their business from their online stores( Ios App + Android App+ Web). Luckily they are so head in the race that their closest competitor Gkb opticals(started from the bottom now we here) which started as a mom and pop store and works on the retail shops model, doesn’t even have launched an app yet. Yes, that’s the kind of market share we are talking about in online eyewear stores.
So who’s left? ( Drum rolls) The family running that eyewear shop 10m away from your house in a metro city from whom your previous generations have been buying lenses, frames and getting their eye-checkups done.
The whole aim of a tech product is to make the entire process of a purchase smooth. However, the steps and guidance displayed needs to be minimal yet sufficient which is pretty difficult to handle when people are already extremely comfortable with buying from physical stores. So is Lenskart able to do that? For that, we will be reviewing their Android App by making some user assumptions. But first, we will have to understand their target audience.
User Base
Lenskart user base consists of people looking to buy spectacles, sunglasses(with/without power), contact lenses and related accessories by keeping fashion in mind. The age at which a user is likely to be prescribed spectacles is reducing in India, that is, the population wearing eyeglasses is getting younger. The (young) consumers are more brand conscious and fashion conscious, willing to spend on multiple pairs of spectacles matching (social) occasions.
However, the issue with their users is that a higher percentage of them are uneducated when comes to having a grasp about their power, lenses type and what not. They are very habitual of being spoon fed with whatever Sharma Ji Opticals has to offer. At the end of it we are assuming that Lenskart is fulfilling the following needs:
1. User needs frames; Present the user with a variety of options to choose from and allow them to buy with ease(without power).
2. User needs frames with power and has a prescription; educate the user further to guide them with the wide range of lenses catalog options Lenskart has to offer.
3. User needs frames with power and doesn’t have a prescription; schedule a free check-up and jump to 2.
4. User needs contact lenses; educate the user further to guide them with the wide range of contact lenses catalog options Lenskart has to offer.
5. User needs aren’t met; no worries, order on call via the customer service(which they are heavily dependent on) or head to the nearby offline retail stores.
App
Now that we have understood the user base and the problems they are tackling, let’s deep dive into the features their app has to offer( evil laugh!!)
Catalog
Lenskart is full of options, no doubt about that. From cat-eye shaped glasses, sunglasses to the type of lenses required i.e. bifocal to anti-glare, the way they have presented their vast catalog is direct and user-friendly.
After viewing their filter options you can pretty much judge the number of options they have in stock( Long Live China) which pretty much meets user satisfaction.
User Journey
Looking at the product, these are the two factors we are going to take note of:
- What’s the point of the page i.e. what action should the user be able to perform?
- Are the necessary functions present, required to help the user perform the action with ease?
Starting from the very first user login flow, we looked at the user journey by keeping above two points in mind. Here are some of the basic issues we found in the Lenskart app:
1| Sign In flow
It is very odd for Lenskart to not keep a direct sign-in option for a guest user, instead, have kept it as a 2 step process. To make this worse they have added the name “specsy”(instead of guest) with a “view account” option to confuse the first time user even more.
Also as it’s a guest account so my orders, my addresses tab, and other user-specific tabs will show as empty.
No, it doesn’t stop here.
Surprisingly you won’t see a Sign Up option as well. One has to enter that mobile number (get OTP verified) or login via email (only Gmail or FB), nothing else is allowed. That’s a decent amount of restriction on Rediff, Hotmail or your company email Id(and you thought your grandparents were strict).
Solution
- Separate CTA button for Sign Up: Keep user onboarding as a 1 step process, with a separate Sign In and Sign Up option from the hamburger menu, making the onboarding process faster and hence skipping displaying of my orders/addresses tabs for the guest user.
- Sign Up via different email domains: Keeping 2 different buttons for Sign In and Sign Up on the Enter Email Screen while configuring the CMS to accept emails from different domains, will give any user the required freedom.
2| Product Purchase flow
Following is the product purchase flow currently present in the Lenskart app:
- Search for a product.
- Select the product to see further details
- Click Buy Now for ADD_TO_CART action and select power/non-power lenses.
- If the user has power, select the package by comparing from the feature chart given.
- If you want to add power, allowed to do that only after the purchase. (Be ready to get hit by a full page of Q&A filled with texts)
Issues
As simple as it seems, the purchase flow on this app seems to be not that friendly. The app makes sure the user is informed on every step with the product details (get your reading glasses on mate) but this doesn’t mean that it makes the user perform that action faster or with lesser effort.
Talking about frames, starting from searching a product, the user has to enter the details page every time to add the frames to cart. Once they are inside, they see a buy now option(No add to cart button or increase quantity option for you buddy!), which in turn directly takes me to a 100-word long page with the power packages comparison that seems extremely tedious.
After this the final step expected by the user is to add their power of lenses but wait, that’s done after you have made the purchase(upload later option in the profile section). But how will you trust Lenskart on this one? Here you go, a screen with a long essay of words . Doesn’t matter how interactive you make it, a majority of users would want to skip reading it (That’s Lenskart’s way of saying they want no trust issues). Phewww. Yup, it’s finally done now. Now when you look around, you are inside your cart already (long way ahead of home).
Lenskart made sure you were educated in the process but doesn’t seem to care if it becomes too much at a point or the number of screens you went through.
Solution
- Add to cart button on listings page: Users should be able to add frames to cart from the product listing page itself. Just because most of the users don’t have an idea about how power lenses work, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be given an option to buy frames faster or will require all the details.
- Integrate steps into a single page: User should be redirected to a single page where the lenses type, package, and power should be selected as a 3 step process. Not changing the order of steps as we are assuming that the power selection after payment completion is a business call.
- Alert box with T&C for power details: For the 3rd step, the user should be presented with an alert box to notify that the power can be added later with a T&C link and a read more link. If the user requires more info, they can happily click on the T&C link, after clicking on which they can get the desired jargon.
- Add to cart box instead of Buy Now: There is no option for the user to add multiple quantities of frames from the product page. The buy now option forces the user to be directed towards the cart, reducing the desire to surf the app more and reducing the session length. This can be avoided by directing the user back to the product page after the desired steps are completed with a “+1” quantity display.
3| CART FLOW
Issues
So after such a long user journey, what action should a user perform if they want to change the power of the frame they have selected? Have an edit option in the cart? Nah, go back and repeat the cycle again!
The products added in the cart including frames with power and contact lenses don’t have an edit option tagged with them. This restricts the user to the functionalities of just removing the product and adding a new one!
Also once a user adds a product in the cart, selects net banking, enters the PayUbiz payment gateway and decides to choose some other gateway, clicks the back button then the cart is cleared( your whole life was a lie!). So where did my cart products go? They are lying, waiting for you with the pending payment status under my orders tab (which again is not an easy task to find). Clearly, the payment_processing status hasn’t been handled properly by the CMS.
Recommendations
All these were the basic issues we found in the most common flows inside the app. Nevertheless, Lenskart being the first(and only) in the race have been successful in providing the user with a decent experience online. However, here are some suggestions which would help the user have a better experience:
- Static cart total:
The cart total should always be static with the page scroll. This eliminates the need for the user to go to the topmost or bottom-most part of the screen every time they visit their cart. Also, the title should be “Your Cart” so that the user doesn’t feel lost.
2. Interactive prescription cheat sheet: Instead of presenting the user with a big non-responsive sheet(is this 2002?) to help them enter their contact lenses power, the user should be presented with a more interactive method i.e. a video or an automated phone call option.
3. Search option on nearby stores: Every product details page has this amazing feature of listing down all the nearby Lenskart stores in a given radius of the user’s location (GoogleMaps APIs are a savior again). However, it picks up a pretty wide radius up to 20km and lists downs more than 50 stores in some cases. If a further search store feature is missing, it becomes very difficult to further scroll down on this huge list.
4. Bullet FAQs: Faqs is probably the very first section in any app which a user or a potential buyer is ready to give a read too. Users are looking for questions first and then answers. Bullet buttons on each question will probably make the navigation for the user much easier.
Summing it up
In terms of business, Lenskart has done a great job so far in getting the market share while investing in eyewear startups including Ditto(3D virtual try-on technology) and ThinOptics(innovative reading glasses that can be attached to a user’s phone or keychain) to make the overall user experience better. They are also getting a decent number of customers on board via their mobile apps.
Even when their closest tech savvy competitor Coolwinks is pretty far in the race, they shouldn’t ignore the fact that there are plenty of issues with the user journey in their apps. They have tried to get as much info as they can from a user but this is a trade-off with the fast or smooth user experience. Although there is a demand for fashionable eyewear product, the smooth user experience is a must. If the app fills this checkbox, then it will be impossible for other competitors to even think of competing in the race(Run Forrest Run).
