PICKING UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF
Picture this. It’s Monday afternoon and you’ve been shopping for cars online all weekend. You just sat down to have your lunch and realize that you’ve only got 10 minutes left before your next meeting. You pull out your phone and go to carmax.com only to see you’re back at the same page and all of the searching and hard work that you did over the weekend is forgotten. So, what do you do? Are you really going to spend the time now to start all over again? Well, unfortunately, you probably will but what if there was a better way?
“What if you could open up carmax.com and without even signing into an account, you were welcomed with the ability to pick up where you left off?”
MY ROLE
I was the lead designer on the team and was responsible for the experience strategy, UX research and overall design of the product.
CUSTOMER INSIGHTS & IDEATION
I partnered with a product manager, senior analyst and another product designer to uncover insights and translate concepts into a feature that address customer behavior and motivation.
EXPERIENCE STRATEGY & VISION
I created wireframes and prototypes to share the vision, design and strategy. This helped to evangelize ideas, gain alignment and drive decision making.
PLANNING & SCOPE DEFINITION
I defined the product with my product manager. I evangelized customer goals and balanced business goals. I prioritized and negotiated features for launch.
OVERSIGHT & COORDINATION
I partnered and collaborated with two product designers and their respective PMs to translate product vision and align on testing.
THE CHALLENGE
CUSTOMERS ARE CREATURES OF HABIT & THEIR TIME IS PRECIOUS
Repeat visitors are determined and almost always complete the same or very similar actions on every return visit. Our challenge was to make it easier for customers to quickly recreate that same search and allow them to get back to looking at cars immediately.
Example of a single user who had multiple sessions where they completed the same or a very similar search.
According to our analytics, 34% of return visitors repeat the same or very similar searches.
This data helped to inform our hypothesis which was:
“We believe that we will increase lead submits if repeat visitors save time, energy and will enjoy shopping at carmax.com by remembering their last search for them.”
THE APPROACH
CHEAP & LEAN
In favor of learning as cheaply and fast as possible, I rapidly designed some wireframes of how this solution could be executed. I alongside my product manager showed the wireframes to 5 customers via live interview sessions to validate our hypothesis.
Early insights showed us that:
THERE’S VALUE IN SAVING RECENT/PAST FILTER DATA
All of the customers that we interviewed felt that this new feature was nice to have.
THIS MAKES THE EXPERIENCE FEEL MORE PERSONALIZED
Customers felt like they were important to CarMax because they were being remembered.
“I think I would be more likely to come back. Anything to make my life easier.”
THE DESIGN
SKETCHING & IDEATING
Based on the feedback that we received from our interview sessions, I partnered with two other product designers where I led multiple sketching sessions to ideate on the design of this new feature.
I presented the sketches to the rest of the team and made recommendations on next steps. Before we invested any time in development resources, I wanted to test this new design direction to identify any usability risks.
RAPID PROTOTYPING
I built a functional prototype in Axure and tested it with users via unmoderated testing sessions.
The insights from the testing session showed that:
Customers were confused about having to re-select the pills once they were on the home page on a revisit.
Customers preferred to have everything automatically selected and just deselect what they are no longer interested in before continuing their search.
Customers believed that the pills represented drop-downs where they could change those selection parameters directly from the tool and then run a new search.
“It makes me feel like I’m not wasting as much time. It saves the work that I’ve done so far.”
Based on the feedback from the first round of unmoderated testing, I iterated on the prototype and ran another series of unmoderated tests. I was able to validate that the changes were positive and capture additional qualitative feedback.
“It makes me feel like I’m a good customer. My business is important. You’re helping me that extra mile. You see me as a real person, and you understand me.”
“It makes me feel cared for. Personalized. That they’re on top things. The page is up to date with me so that I don’t have to go through all of that again.”
CREATING MOCK-UPS
The testing proved to our team that this tool could be valuable and helpful for our customers. After reviewing the results, I designed mock-ups of how this feature could look in production and shared those with the team. The team had quality feedback and I iterated on the design a bit more based on their recommendations and insight.
TESTING THE PRODUCT
THE LAUNCH
Once the designs were in a good place, I partnered with one of our software developers to execute the tool in production. My PM and analyst worked together to set up an Adobe Target test for this new experience vs. current in a true A/B fashion.
LEARNINGS & OPPORTUNITIES
We ran the test in production for a period of 7 days. I partnered with our PM and senior analyst to interpret the data. Engagement levels were high but lead submission rate was overall flat.
At CarMax, I was part of a pilot team using FullStory to watch live customers engaging and shopping on our site. I created a segment within the application to monitor those that had seen the RYLS component and also one to monitor engagement with it as well.
Insights and behaviors from the video sessions showed us that:
1. The majority of the people “got it”
2. There was a potential pattern of behavior where customers were deselecting filters that were no longer relevant to their search and then entering a free text search.
3. “Find Your Car” CTA on the home page was competing with our component and causing confusion as to where customers should click.
FINAL TAKEAWAYS
The test validated our concept and the insights presented the team with opportunities for further testing and ideating.
The key takeaways and opportunities from this study were:
1. This tool could potentially be more effective across other areas of the website.
2. Customers save time by being able to pick up where they left off which makes them build loyalty and trust with CarMax.
3. Repeat visitors are creatures of habit and their experience should be different than new visitors.
4. There are usability risks in the interaction pattern of selecting and de-selecting.
I switched teams shortly after the test ended. I’ve kept in close contact with the product designer whose leading design on that team. He has informed me that they’re planning to run additional tests in the coming quarter for this experience and I’m looking forward to hearing the learnings that come from that.