Belk Checkout
In 2018, the traditional American department store chain founded 130 years ago in Monroe, North Carolina has seen a significant sales decline primarily in their digital shopping space. The newly recruited leadership wanted to revisit their digital strategy to retain their loyal customers. PROBLEM
Cart abandonment
The sales team has reported that the cart abandonment rate is increasing at an alarming rate compared to their competitors. But they couldn't pin point the exact reason why.
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ROLE
Taking ownership
Conrad, director of digital experience encouraged me to take ownership of increasing checkout conversion. Rachel, UX Lead gave me complete freedom and support to use any tools or research method internally to bring convincing evidence that can persuade leadership in creating an informed user experience.
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CHALLENGE
Establishing research and analytics
New leadership was hesitant to invest in user research. I had to work out a way to get research data.
I connected with the sales team to create an Adobe analytics dashboard personalized for UX observing users' digital shopping behavior. |
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APPROACH
Starting from MobileThe UX dashboard indicated that more than 60% of customers are shopping in mobile compared to other device breakpoints; 35% desktop, 5% tablet.
I started conceptualizing the mobile concepts thinking from a user's mental model to see the essential information needed to finish the goal of checking out with ease. |
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DISCOVERY
Finding the root cause
I was clueless about what exactly was the problem that causes customers to drop out of the check out process. The customer dashboard I have set up The 5 step/page checkout process showed bounce rate gradually increased in each step. I deduced that the non-optimized mobile form led the customers to finish their checkout on desktop.
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COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Benchmark standards
While doing competitor analysis, I came across Baymard's tremendous research on the e-commerce platform over decades analyzing top brands. They have created a benchmark for every aspect of e-commerce shopping starting from sign-up to checkout.
With limited user research capacity, Baymard's e-commerce benchmark standards helped me convince leadership with testimonials from top brands. |
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USER FLOW
Reducing the steps to Checkout 👣
In the initial analysis of the current checkout process, I realized that the overall process feels long and tedious. So I wanted to keep the steps required to reach the goal as fewer as possible.
WIRE FRAME
Empathizing with Guests
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Sign In Page
Single page layout for a seamless checkout experience.
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Order summary
Readily accessible only on demand with all items and price breakdown.
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4 step checkout
Sets right expectation, avoiding assumptions.
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Instant feedback
Increases motivation and confidence to proceed with no doubt.
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Review by section
Showing completed section to review and edit if needed.
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Flexible payment options
Review all information before placing order and option to save info.
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Inline error
To correct or provide missing information of the fields in focus.
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Review order
To edit or confirm all the details before placing the order.
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Save Info
Showing the value, rather just asking to create an account
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TEST
Peer testing the prototype
Even though I had not the capacity to conduct extensive user research and testing, I found some of my peers are already customers of Belk. So I chose a few of them that suit the primary persona to test the prototyped solution.
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DISCOVERY
One-click Checkout 👆
Observing users going through the checkout process showed that they feel overwhelmed about providing all the information. I recommended the single-step checkout for the registered customer, removed the overhead of entering all the information.
Customers were delighted to skip to the review page and place an order in one click. |
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DEVELOPMENT
Delivering a responsive solution
I had to deliver mock-ups for the end-to-end experience for all three device breakpoints; mobile, tablet, and desktop.
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IMPACT
+13% Conversion 🙌
I was more than happy to see an increase in the checkout conversion overall 13%, considering the limited user research I was able to do.
The effectiveness of data driven user experience design, brought the executives onboard to invest more in user research. |
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