Retail Customer Experience
Video Shopping
As the pandemic began and lockdowns started, we were faced with a problem: how do we deliver the same store experience to customers now that they're shopping from home?
Role
As the sole experience designer for this project, I conducted user research to understand user needs and pain points, created user personas and journey maps, and developed high-fidelity designs. I collaborated with cross-functional teams to ensure alignment and consistency throughout the design process, and iterated on designs based on user feedback and data analysis.
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Initial Design: September 2020 - October 2020
Initial Launch: October 2020
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Re-design: March 2021 - August 2021
Re-launch: September 2021​
Outcomes
Projected to represent approximately 14% of the domestic online revenue for the fiscal year
Highest conversion rate among digital sales channels (four times higher than chat and voice)
Background
​The COVID-19 pandemic caused lockdowns which led to many people shifting to remote work and education. This created a demand for new technology to facilitate these ways of working. As the largest electronics retailer in the U.S., this company had to adapt to the changing shopping behaviors.
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​In late 2020 we launched a pilot to explore video as a sales channel, but with the shift to primarily online shopping, we quickly realized that our existing solution wasn't scalable. ​​
Approach
To kick off this project, I partnered with a researcher who would tackle industry research to gain insights on how the pandemic was shifting shopping behaviors while I focused on the pilot to understand how shoppers were using video and identify pain points with the existing experience. We also spoke with employees who interacted with customers on a daily basis to gain insight into their perspectives on the existing platform. ​
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I combined all of our research to create customer mindsets that the working team could rally around. We then focused on optimizing the experience for the pre-purchase mindsets.
I created a video call experience that was fully integrated into our other chat experiences which made it possible to:
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Seamlessly transition between pure text chat and video
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Browse products while on a call
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View screen share from employees for additional shopping assistance
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See a personalized product demo for customer specific use cases
A new ops team was also stood up to tackle issues we encountered in the pilot. Which created a dedicated space to handle video calls also allowed us to address issues that popped up in the store pilot:
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Customers shopping in store would interrupt employees on video chats to ask questions
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The ambient noise in stores made it difficult to hear employees
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Store Wi-Fi wasn't stable and would occasionally drop in the middle of conversations
Outcomes
The result was the creation of a virtual store that could provide customers with personalized service and expertise from the comfort and safety of their own homes.
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The updated experience led to:
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Increased customer satisfaction
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Customers with different abilities or those who are hesitant to shop in store found video calls very useful, felt cared for, and valued
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Conversion rate 4x higher than other digital channels like chat or voice
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Roughly 14% of online domestic revenue
