Challenge
A software company observed an industry-wide uptick in gift card sales that was noticeably absent on walmart.com, their largest client account. They felt that similar profits were possible for Walmart and wanted to encourage changes to their online store.
Role & Responsibilities.
I led mixed-methods research to identify areas for improvement and build a set of recommendations that our client could pitch to Walmart.
Approach
Research activities consisted of:
– a competitor UX review that allowed us to benchmark the big-box retailer against its competition. We reviewed page structure and navigation across 6 competitors and 4 adjacent brands.
– a consumer survey that established the online shopping expectations of our target customer. We surveyed 1,000 recent walmart.com gift card shoppers to find out how they shopped and what they looked for when they shopped.
– a set of A/B user tests that compared walmart.com’s user experience to that of its rivals. We observed users buying a $50 gift card online at Walmart and a competitor’s website
Our research highlighted two key problem areas in Walmart’s online gift card purchase experience; ineffective search and confusing product labeling
Problem 1: ineffective search
We found that gift card purchases tend to be intentional (i.e. the consumer had already decided to buy a specific gift card before opening their browser) and that, therefore, the search bar is the dominant mode of navigation used. However, during observation searches often returned unexpected results causing shoppers to either search again using different search terms or abandon the purchase.
Problem 2: confusing product labelling
Individual product listings further confused users. During testing, users were initially unsure if product listings were for physical gift cards that would arrive in the mail, digital codes that would be delivered by email, or if there were multiple denomination options available.
Outcome
Alongside our research findings, we made specific, insight-led design recommendations for updates to the retailer’s online store (shown overleaf). These were progressed by the client, contributing to a five per cent year-on-year increase in category sales (equivalent to around $250m in new revenue).