Gifting for Discovery & Retention
Problem
How might we encourage customers to spend more while encouraging “safe” product discovery?
Approach
I developed a component with a simple default view, clearly explained spending tiers, and easy product browsing.
Impact
The component increased average order value by $1.09, increased gross margin and increased tipped order volume by 11.0%.
Design Approach
“Whatever it was, [if] I knew I wasn’t gonna use it, I’ll pass it along to my mom or sister... if people could pick, then it wouldn’t be wasted.”
I was the lead designer, completing the end-to-end redesign in 4 weeks.
I worked closely with the product manager and 2 full-stack engineers.
Why Gifting?
The existing gift experience offered every customer the same gift for reaching a certain spending level.
Gifting also enabled Grove to move overstocked inventory.
In discovery interviews, we learned why they wanted to choose their own gift.
Instead of this gift feeling like a delight, it felt wasteful — a big problem for a sustainability-centric company.
Client
Grove Collaborative
Duration
4 weeks (Mar 2019)
My Role
Lead Product Designer
Collaborators
1 Product Manager, 2 Engineers, 1 User Researcher (part-time)
Prioritize Clarity Above All Else
Through research, early design concepting and internal discussions, we identified 4 main design principles:
➊
Keep it lean and minimize screen real estate.
The cart page was incredibly dense and we didn’t want to add even more scrolling in mobile web.
➋
Clearly represent spending thresholds.
Since we expect to test thresholds, they may change over time. So, progress indicators towards the tipper threshold also have to be flexible.
➌
Show images for all products.
Customers use images to interpret product category and, thus, their interest (i.e., spray bottles are assumed to be cleaners). Customers are also familiar with packaging of their favorite brands, so images can speed comprehension.
➍
Make clear they need to “Ship Now”.
Gifts had two requirements: meet the threshold and ship your upcoming order now. This has been a common pain point in customer support and we needed to do our best to eliminate confusion/disappointment.
Gift Info Panel
Usability Testing: Modals Or Panels?
I created an Invision prototype to test the usability of two concepts.
This goal of usability testing was to decide:
How much product detail was necessary in the default view?
Where was the best place to expose spending thresholds?
What else should we consider in choosing products for the program?
Gift Info Modal
Testing Results
Users overwhelmingly preferred to see product photos in the cart component (testing goal 1).
Since they made their gift decision from the cart, they needed spending tiers visible (testing goal 2). But when needing to review ingredients or size, they needed to quick access to the product details (testing goal 1).
Based on user reactions to gifts/categories, we provided guidance to Marketing on approaches for customer segmentation (testing goal 3)
“Well that would be kind of disappointing if I was making my $50 purchase and to find out I can’t, I would be really frustrated.. I wouldn’t add the $20 amount to get the free gift.”
Final Design & Project Impact
The A/B test was very successful!
We increased average order value by 1.5% (equivalent to $1.09 in our largest and lowest spending customer segment), increased margin by 1.0% and, increased the number of orders that tip by 11.0% (orders with subtotals reaching a tipping threshold).
The component was released to all existing customers and is now a pillar of Grove’s gifting program.
Marketing continues to optimize customer segmentation and and drive awareness of product categories with low penetration, while Inventory and Merchandising teams use the feature to manage overstocked or discontinued items.