Wayfair: Browse Redesign for Technical Products
User Problem
When shopping certain types of products (like mattresses, flooring, and vacuum cleaners) it can be hard to know the differences between them without some specific attribute information. Our existing experiences fell short on the need to quickly compare products and educate the user on these attributes.
Goal
Our primary goal was to clarify differences between products while creating a more consistent and scannable experience for the user. Additionally, leverage a more reliable data source and create an experience that was 100% compliant with our design system.
Team
I worked closely with my content strategist, Diana Bishop, my engineering team, and my product partner.
Initial Research
We conducted a survey of several stakeholders across different teams to understand what they felt was working well with the current experience and where they saw the greatest opportunity for improvement. Sharing out the results of this survey helped create quick alignment.
Survey synthesis
The existing experience had data gaps and used space inefficiently. Many category partners knew their products would benefit from a specifications view in browse, but didn’t opt into this experience because of UX concerns.
This work was constrained to desktop and tablet devices, because the experience we were testing against is only available at larger breakpoints.
Design Phase
Starting with low fidelity wireframes, I went through a rapid iteration process. I worked to validate the designs against challenging constraints (german, long specification names) and helped document clear requirements for our category partners. This ensured that the attributes we were pulling in weren’t too long and were relevant to the customer. In the end, we tested two different variations in an A/B/C test (one with more guidance on these attributes, one without guidance).
Additionally, I worked on vision state ideas to capture possible next steps when we revisit this work.
Early whiteboard sketches
Detailed design for Flooring products
Detailed design for Mattress products
I ran two rounds of usability testing to refine the designs ahead of development, and created a script and launched a test while the A/B/C test was live to capture more customer feedback.
Pre-Mortem
As part of an effort to collaborate more closely with analytics, I facilitated a ‘pre-mortem’ session with the core team to identify possible points of failure across the two variations. This allowed our analysts to create stronger test hypotheses and also served as a trust building exercise for the team.
Results
The experience was a win, adding millions in annual incremental revenue. We saw an estimated +7.2% lift in overall conversion rate and are creating a rollout plan for Q3 2022.
Check it out live! https://www.wayfair.com/bed-bath/sb0/mattresses-c544552.html