A New Era

Fraser Crick

on Portfolio

3 min read

To design a new checkout for 14 brands, surely it been done before!

MY ROLE

I started this project through my own frustration, I knew what we were delivering could be so much better. I worked with Customer Care to find patterns and issues to prove an ROI for the project, I directed study groups and used the findings to scope and write the project requirements, developed and tested new flows and prototypes and presented the findings and results to board members.

THE IDEA

The current checkout was very fixed in its flow and options, there are also some major flaws in its architecture which have become apparent from conversations with Customer Care.

The idea was to provide evidence that there are issues and also some recommendations on how issues could be resolved.

This was going to be presented to the board for approval so I did some initial research with some comparative tests and some poking around in Google analytics. The time spent with Customer care was also invaluable to building out an initial report and proving revenue loss from our current checkout.

SIGN OFF

I put together the initial report and presented my findings, The best way to get my point across was to show them the issues first hand.

I decided to user test the board members for my presentation to give them the perspective of the user, I rigged a couple of devices with screen sharing software and got a couple of the board members to go through the same flow as a user would. The results were outstanding, the board instantly recognised the need to dedicate resource to this project.

THE PROJECT WAS NOW A GO.

I developed an initial flow that improved the vast majority of issues encountered by Customer Care and my initial checkout observations.

Our current implementation provided no easy way of split testing improvements and changes, not to mention the architecture was so complicated it was quicker to release version 2 of our checkout and monitor.

THE APPROACH

  • Build a new checkout prototype following the proposed flow
  • Test said prototype
  • Workshop the prototype with a bunch of developers, Customer Care, and brand managers.
  • Improve the results of the test
  • Repeat until the results were satisfactory

Once we felt the prototype had plateaued on on issues within the timeframe we brought in the developers and project managers to scope the new build.

THE BUILD

After the project managers and board members had agreed on an initial scope the build began. It was decided not to affect too much of the flow but to improve the page structure and general user experience of the form that the user had to fill out.

Once the initial approach was built we tested again and again and again until we were satisfied it was ready for production. The business had final sign off so another presentation was required to, I went through numerous presentations walking through the changes and justifying the changes with video snippets of test subjects.