Shopping for auto parts,
made easier
& smarter.
In an effort to digitize the brick & mortar retail presence for a major chain of auto parts stores, I created a more easy, interactive, and informative digital shopping experience for their customers. The user experience opportunity went beyond what was on the screen and also dove into screen placement and usage as it relates to the customer journey and experience through the store itself.
The client was interested in digitizing their retail space as a key differentiator over their competition and exploring what the auto parts store of the future might be like. While they were still a major player in the market, they saw other major stores with auto departments start to become major competition. They approached my team to help them create a new an innovative way to shop, discover, and learn about their products while increasing loyalty. We created a network of interactive screens in 6 of their most shopped sections that had an interactive shopping app on them. The biggest pain point they asked us to address was to create a digital version of the antiquated printed book shoppers used to find the products that were right for their year, make, and model of car.
My role, as the lead UI/UX designer on this project, was to conceptualize and design a digital solution and work with our internal teams to create an android app that could be user tested in a one year pilot program. Two versions were slated to be developed and released during the pilot. A large part of my role would also be digesting the data collected each month to optimize the content displayed on the screen and inform the second iteration of the app. This also included extensive user testing, interviewing, and collection feedback from store associates and customers. I also worked closely with the marketing, in-store strategy, and social/web teams of the client to help this platform be another omni-channel marketing arm.
The app that is shown here is the second version that was to be developed for the second half of the pilot. This was created after extensive user testing and research that informed the developments.
The problem
Customers found it difficult to identify, locate, and price compare the right products for their car in-store without assistance or a certain level of car knowledge. Product discovery declined as repeat customers only bought what they knew or needed. There was not a clear way for new or inexperienced customers to explore and make a buying decision on their own. Increasing basket size, showing inventory, creating consumer-generated content, and increasing loyalty sign-ups were also important.
The question
How might we create a digital in-store experience in a future store type for new and loyal shoppers of varying car knowledge to enhance the shopping experience and increase product discovery and purchases across departments? How might we give them an easy and informative experience that reduces uncertainty, product returns and stress so that they can get items they need for their specific year, make and model of car.
The solution
I designed a system of interactive screens around the store that displayed department specific advertising and a custom shopping experience that would make it easy to find products and increase customer engagement and loyalty. The solution also included a strategy on how the screens would be placed, encountered, and used through a new customer journey.
The users were
not only the customers
The client identified three key users when designing the experience; diy-ers, customers shopping on someone’s behalf, and employees. The needs, wants, and priorities of these users evolved over time as we did more in-person research.
The data that the platform was able to collect also gave us more insight about shopping behaviors of these users. Understanding store traffic, dwell time lead, and demographics by day/time lead to utilizing strategies like deploying rule-based based content, day-parting, and changing screen placement.
As an avid car lover and DIY-er, Mark is a loyal customer who shops in the store often. He is well versed in products he regularly uses and has brand preferences. He will use the lookup book from time to time but prefers looking online. He isn’t taking the time to compare prices or look in the weekly flyer because it’s too time consuming. He wants a way to compare prices, get coupons and information on products he is interested in, and have his store loyalty work to his advantage. He wishes there was a way to connect with his fellow do-it-yourselfers and get more advice for more complex projects.
Mary is shopping for items that her spouse asked her to pick up. She is not very knowledgeable about car parts and usually needs help from a store associate to make sure she picked up the right item. She doesn’t use the look up book and has to ask for help which may take a while if the store is busy. She usually double checks with her spouse as well, so she doesn’t have to come back for a return. She needs a way to find what she needs quickly on her own, share information on her phone to others, and get the best price possible.
As a store employee and manager, Christina juggles a lot of tasks day-to-day with a small staff. Online order pickup has just been introduced to the store. Online orders need picking and processing on top of helping customer look up products, checking them out, and performing free service the store provides. She needs a tool to help eliminate customer lookup requests, a way to get more product information she isn’t familiar with in-aisle, and a place to get more knowledge to pass to the customer.
Learning to listen and listening
to learn.
A big part of planning on what to optimize on was based user testing. At this point, we had already had a version of the experience out in a set of stores that gave us a lot of data to learn from. We had seen a positive lift with the first version of the app and hoped to keep a positive upward trend.
While I had been looking at the data with our head of marketing to understand content/app performance and demographics, we still didn’t fully understanding what the user really felt about it or wanted next. I shifted my focus from what I was listening to, to who I was listening to. We had done some user testing via usertesting.com to get fresh perspectives but I was really interested in the group of customers and employees who had been already using it for the last 6 months. In order to get the information I needed, I did several things:
Sent out a survey to store managers
Visited 10 out of 22 stores in 3 states to conduct interviews
Interviewed store employees about their, and customers’, experiences
Observed customers in-store
Taking this very hands on approach helped me not only get the information I needed but uncovered other insights. Store location in proximity to competitors and social/economical information about shoppers of a particular store where some thing I could only learn in person. Once that research was organized and prioritized, I started to work on refining the experience, the screen placement plan and each screen purpose. Through this research and testing we uncovered a few important things:
A 4th persona, Mechanics/Pros. This had a major impact on where we thought about placing screens and how that screen experience would be different than the rest.
Shelf depth and screens that we placed above products had a negative affect on user engagement.
Customers had a particular interest in the idea of a digital circular.
Employees wanted a screen behind the counter to help them manage service requests that they could carry with them to cars.
Refining the solution
More consideration was given to the experience as a whole. I took a bigger step back to see the whole picture of the customer journey from the moment they walk through the door to getting a text on their phone after engaging the screen.
Integrating advertising and interactivity
Much of the layout of the interior pages remained similar in this iteration but were styled differently and refined for easier usability. The biggest change was to the navigation and how the interactive and advertisement portions were integrated. The user would still approach the carousel of rotating advertisements. But, instead of navigating away into the interactive experience they could explore the menu and loyalty incentive sign up by pulling out the menus and making a choice before leaving the ads.
The navigation featured touch points to bring you into a product selector, a library of advice and how-to articles/videos, a price scanner, a digital promo flyer, and some fun/social activities.
Refining, not reinventing, the book
The main feature of the experience is the product selector or look-up system. Previous to this experience, products could be found listed in a book displayed at the end of each aisle. This selector asked you for your car year, make, model, and engine type before selecting a category. Once the information and category are selected, it served you three compatible products at varying price points. There, you could compare products, see if any are on sale, or browse through the category. You could go one step deeper to the product page for any of the recommendations. There, you could get product info, coupons, installation advice, and more.
Letting the physical influence the digital
The experience was the same across all the screen types during the first half of the pilot. After re-consideration from the data finding, I started to think about how each screen might be used in a more focused way to influence how the customer experiences the store.
And in the end…
The client ended up internally reprioritizing their efforts and moved away from integrating their digital and physical presences in a large scale roll out. Shortly before beginning the development of the second version of the app, the decision to uninstall the screens was made. While it was not an ideal ending, so much was learned about digitizing retail and the importance of continual research and refinement.