Priceline
Priceline, a major health and beauty retailer wanted help with aligning their digital experience with customer needs.
My role as a UX researcher and UI designer, working alongside a principal designer, was to help the organisation understand customer needs, explore the opportunity areas and create a user-centric website experience that was accessible to all.
​
The delivery of customer journey maps helped the business identify areas of opportunity to ground its strategy in user needs and pain points.
Creating and delivering a new design system with accessibility considerations baked into its core provided the business with a valuable starting point to scale their design practices.
​
The delivery of Figma screens which ultimately led to a new Priceline website helped customers complete core tasks such as navigating the website, understanding product availability, and checking out more seamlessly.
What was done:
-
​Project kick-off workshop
-
18 x 20 minute guerrilla interviews
-
True Intent Survey
-
12 x 60 minute usability testing with Priceline customers
-
Customer journey maps
-
Online Card Sorting
-
Online Tree Testing​​
-
Design System
-
Wireframing
-
Prototyping
Time:
Tools:
​8 months
​
-
​​Hotjar
-
Optimal workshop
-
Figma
-
Google Form
-
Mural
The challenge
Since it's early days as a beauty retailer, Priceline has grown to become a household name. In the digital age of online retail, Priceline with its legacy system struggled to scale at pace and deliver the kind of customer experience it needed to.
​
The goal of the project was to capture and deliver the magic of online retail and omnichannel shopping experiences.
Our high level goal was to understand the different shopping missions across the online and physical Priceline stores and the role of technology in creating a holistic shopping experience.
The outcome
Live website can now be viewed here.
Conducting user research
Partnering with Priceline's project team, we ran a true intent survey through Hotjar on the website to understand customers' main tasks and how successful they were in completing those tasks. More than 1,000 responses were collected and analysed.
Furthermore, a google form survey was sent to Priceline reward program members to gain an insight into what they considered important when it comes to their online shopping experience. More than 8,000 responses were collected and analysed.
​
We also ran a mix of instore guerrilla interviews and remote (online) one-on-one interviews.
Top 2 insights
1. Focusing on the fundamentals of online shopping
It was important to customers that at the end of the day that the basic fundamentals of online shopping are done well. In the minds of customers this means fast delivery, accurate dispatch times, reliable stock information and useful product reviews.
2. Reward programs can be utilised to create better engagement
Customers didn't understand how the Sister Club program worked or the benefits of the program. For customers who were motivated by earning points, they were frustrated by the lack of visibility of their point accumulation and felt the redemption experience could be improved.
Defining the user journey
After synthesising the research, I realised that the customer journeys were different depending on whether the customers were shopping for scripts, health, or beauty products.
When it came to beauty products, there was also a clear differentiation between the 'power users' (customers who had high levels of engagement with Priceline) and the 'causal users' (customers who had low levels of engagement with Priceline).
Scripts and prescriptions journey map
Health journey map
Beauty journey map
Reviewing the information architecture
We conducted 1 round of online card sorting through Optimal Workshop and two rounds of online tree testing to understand customers' mental models when it came to searching and locating products.
Key Insight
Customers did not consider products and content as separate. This resulted in a new navigation where we envisaged an experience that allowed customers to seamlessly navigate between products and related content.
A new and more inclusive design.
Before the project team jumped into the design, we recognised that this was our chance to build something for everyone. It was important that accessibility was baked into the design system however the challenge was persuading stakeholders to embrace accessibility and incorporate it in the designs as it scales.
Using accessibility case studies to speak a common language
To illustrate the business value of accessible design, I provided two case studies about Tesco UK and the Sydney Olympics website.
​
It was used to highlight the business value of implementing accessible design throughout the website build while providing a cautionary tale of what might happen in the reverse.
​
This was well-received and impactful. As a result, there was a commitment to adhere to WCAG 2.1 standards by the business.
How might we help improve visibility of stock availability & help customers understand delivery better?
One of the challenges we had to overcome was that there was a complex delivery system that depended on whether a store was a Priceline pharmacy store or a Priceline (beauty) store.
​
This was an immovable business requirement which meant that different stores had different combinations of delivery methods.
From the product details page, the customer could:
​
-
View the current store that they are viewing stock for. This was important as the stock availability differed across different stores.
-
View availability of stock for delivery, click and collect, and fast delivery (next-day delivery). Unknown to the customer, complex business rules meant that not all stores offered fast delivery.
-
Change the store to view different stock availability for stores depending on whether they wanted to do click and collect, or fast delivery.
How might we help customers understand what's available at different stores?
Customers were provided a way to change the store for which stock available is being displayed. From a drawer slideout, customers could scroll to find a store that had standard delivery, fast delivery or click and collect available.
How might we incorporate product with content to better help customers navigate the site?
The card sorting research indicated that most of the participants thought about product content (such as guides, how-tos, videos) belonged with the product items. For the design, this meant incoporating relevant product tiles within the relevant content and ensure that when customers shopped for products they could easily identify and locate relevant content.
.png)
Testing the designs and iterations
Two rounds of usability testing were carried out with 6 participants in each round and iterations were made to the mid-fidelity design in between. Core workflows tested included the check-out of beauty and pharmacy items, changing the store, viewing stock availability, and locating content.
Insights from testing
The biggest learning to come out of the usability testing was around the medication checkout workflow. It was found that most participants had additional questions about how they would be contacted by a pharmacist after they have gone through the checkout process. This was something the organisation had to consider in the context of its existing technology and business structure.
​
SUS: >80
NPS:>15
​
For confidentiality reasons I have omitted the actual values of these metrics
Impact of the project
The project provided a way for internal stakeholders within the organisation to align on customer needs and adopt a more customer-centric approach.
​
The customer journey maps were widely distributed across the organisation and used as a starting point for conversations on enhancing other digital products within the organization. From the feedback given, the research insights were used to bring various internal teams onto the same page to ensure that decisions made would positively impact customers' needs.
​
As a result of the work undertaken, we were given opportunities to assist with other areas of the organisation.
Reflection
Aaron walter's heirarchy of needs
This project was challenging as I had to understand and unpack the various business requirements. There were also legal requirements that had to be taken into account when it came to pharmaceutical products.
​
There were nuances that had to be taken into account when designing the screens for different workflows. For example, there was a difference between being able to add a pharmacy item to a cart that was in stock and having that item dispensed during the checkout stages. These nuances added to the complexity of the design.
​
Additional challenges came in the form of the sister club registration workflow as a complex back-end system meant that multiple system checks had to be carried out. This meant that the design had to accommodate the constraint while creating an intuitive interface.
​
I learnt that it was important during the project to educate stakeholders about Aaron Walter's hierarchy of needs and ground our designs around functionality, reliability, and usability.
