Sales & Promotions Exploration

Rethinking Wayfair's Events Portfolio and Navigation

Goal

With a growing portfolio of shoppable events, it was time to look at how Wayfair was presenting their Sales & Promotions to users. This was a project I pitched to Product Managers and was excited to get their buy-in. The objective was to gain better qualitative and quantitative user insights and based off that, reevaluate UX.

Scope

This project kicked off in early 2018. Since this work would impact promotions like Holiday, tests had to be launched before code freeze in November.

Work involved:

  • User Surveys & Interviews
  • Personas
  • Competitive Research
  • Data Analysis
  • Information Architecture
  • Wireframing & Prototyping
  • Testing

My Role

I was design lead on this project and with the help from my designer, Stephanie, was point person for all UX tasks. I also lead several collaborative design sessions with cross-functional partners to ensure everyone had a voice.

The Team

My Team:

  • Design Lead: Me
  • Design: Stephanie
  • UX Copy: Shelby

Cross-Functional Partners:

  • User Research
  • Product Management
  • Data Analysts
  • Engineering

Stakeholders:

  • Sr. Management
  • Promotions

Approach

I helped assemble a small, cross-functional team which included Analysts and Engineers. We started by diving into quantitative data and researching what was common practice from our competitors. I worked with our head of user research to determine the best tasks to gain user insights. One of the biggest wins on this project was that we conducted our first-ever panel discussion. Moderated by Cay from UX research, panels of 5-6 Sale users came into the office and answered a series of questions in front of an audience of stakeholders. The casual format allowed for anyone in the room to ask the panel questions. It was a great opportunity for many different groups to gain quick insights. We learned the following about our Sales users:

  • Users love a bargain
  • They have a budget
  • A "deal" means something different to everyone
  • They want to know they're getting a good deal:
    • How much are they saving
    • Is it a good-quality item
    • Does it have good reviews
    • How does the price compare to what they budgeted
  • There are 3 types of Sale users:
    • Hunter — "I know what I'm looking for."
    • Browser — "I don't know what I want."
    • Tbd — "I kind of have an idea what I'm looking for."
Sales Persona - The Browser
Zoom
Sales Persona - The Hunter
Zoom

Design Studios

Once the team had a good understanding of the users' needs, we began developing requirements for an ideal Sale experience. I led several design studios with the cross-functional team to make sure everyone was involved.

Sales Whiteboarding
Zoom

Wireframing & Prototyping

As concepts emerged, I began building out wireframes and prototypes in Flinto, so we could meet with stakeholders and describe the vision which included:

  • Consolidating the number of different types of events
  • Incorporating existing UX paradigms/UI components
  • Introducing browse filters specific to Sale users
  • Enhancing Wayfair's existing search bar to better surface Sale items in search results
  • Including a personalized feed of product and events on the Sale landing experience:
    • Encourages browsing in a Pinterest-y way
    • Gives users something new to see every time they come back
    • Surfaces events in a more organic way as opposed to forcing them on all users
    • Shows users product they are likely interested in based on browsing history and seasonality
Sales Navigation Prototype

Challenges

  • Obtaining resources for a project that wasn't part of the product roadmap
  • Gaining insights from users
  • Justifying any new components/design patterns
  • Sticking to self-imposed deadlines
  • Identifying and prioritizing the problems being addressed
  • Developing testing plans that would move the needle but also isolate enough changes to produce clean test results
Sales Navigation Prototype

Outcome

I left Wayfair while this project was in progress. The team was successful in gaining user insights, conducting Wayfair's first panel discussion and challenging an experience that had been untouched for some time.