Stephen Herko

JCPenney Cart and Checkout

My role

  • Strategy
  • UX Design
  • Research

Team

  • 6 Engineers
  • 1 UX designer
  • 1 Product owner
  • 1 Researcher

Goal

There are multiple stakeholders that have a voice for the cart and checkout experience leaving the customer as secondary. This has resulted in an experience with too many features for the user, and an unclear message/story to the user. As a result cart and checkout abandonment rate was increasing.

Duration

2020

sdf

Problem Statement

There are multiple stakeholders that have a voice for the cart and checkout experience leaving the customer as secondary. This has resulted in an experience with too many features being added, and an unclear message/story to the user. As a result cart and checkout abandonment rate was increasing. Our mission was investigate, and increase checkout conversion.

sdf

Keeping the user first

In large corporations, it can be challenging to keep the user first in all of our design decisions to our stakeholders. It required a significant amount of convincing with stakeholders, who often had other priorities and competing interests. However, I recognized the importance of maintaining a user-centered design approach to ensure that our products and services met the needs of our users. To help with this, I utilized a template that clearly outlined the benefits and rationale for keeping the user at the center of our design process. I communicated this often with my stakeholders, emphasizing the importance of listening to our users and incorporating their feedback throughout the design process.

Working with our research team

I worked with the product manager and research team to review customer behavior via heatmaps and customer feedback. We had a weekly cadence to discuss these topics, take note and incorporate them into our next steps.

sdf

Success Metrics

Increase conversion by

0.25%

Improve tablestakes on

7 pages

Decrease cart abandonment by

2%


Creating a mission statement

My goal was to prioritize the user in our team's focus, as objectives became overly fixated on metrics and conversions, losing sight of the most crucial element: the user.

JCPenney customers are drawn to the store for various reasons, including their love for discounts and the ability to apply discounts to their orders, setting it apart from competitors.

The team at JCPenney was structured based on ownership of major pages, such as the homepage or the cart and checkout experience, which was the responsibility of our team. However, I emphasized to the team that we should not be limited by these boundaries within the company. From the customer's perspective, it is a seamless experience from beginning to end. This approach helped us maintain a user-centric focus.

sdf

sdf

Spending time with the users

We had the ability to watch users check out from beginning to end. I would often order things on the JCPenney website in order to build empathy for the user.

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

Auditing and Opportunities

As an initial first step, taking an audit of the exsting checkout experience on mobile and desktop was evident there many opportunities to enhance the user's experience. Simple fixes were called out such as:

  • Showing the numerical keyboard when a user is entering their credit card
  • Keeping input fields above the fold while users are typing in their info on mobile devices
  • Removing obtrusive distractions that covered the input fields
  • Allowing auto suggestions when a user is filling out their email address in the correct input fields, and remove auto suggestions where it doesn't have any relevance. For example as a user was typing in their CVV number to their credit card, the system was showing the user reccomendations to fill in with their email address
  • While users were checking out with PayPal, the first name and last name were filled in with "JCPenney" and "store2410" resulting in the user having to delete these. In some events, user's didn't notice and the payment and checkout had issues and couldn't be completed properly.
  • Many users abandonend checkout due to the price rising after adding their address and recalcuating tax and shipping. The shift in the bottom line was too much of a shock.

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

Visioning

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

Reducing interuptions

Our customers love to hunt for a deal, which often involves adding and removing items from their cart as they compare prices and save items for later. However, the current experience had an obtrusive pop-up with a warning icon asking the user to confirm their removal every time they wanted to do this. To create a more enjoyable and hassle-free shopping experience, I proposed to remove the majority of pop-ups in the cart and replace them with a softer message that didn’t block or cover their items.

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

Design system

All new features and future decisions should fall back on the design system.

To ensure a consistent and efficient user experience across all scenarios and use cases, I felt it was necessary to create a comprehensive design system specific to the cart and checkout experience. With multiple changes and updates being made, it is easy to overlook edge cases that can ultimately impact the user's experience. By creating a design system, the team can establish a set of guidelines, components, and patterns that will maintain consistency and eliminate the risk of missing critical edge cases. This approach not only streamlines the design and development process but also indirectly benefits the user by reducing the risk of unfinished experiences that could lead to abandonment. By incorporating a design system, the team can ensure that every use case is accounted for and that the user experience remains seamless and consistent.

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

sdf

Testing and validating

Quantifying was crucial step in measuring our results. However, when there is an existing checkout experience that is generating revenue, it becomes challenging to test alternative designs without disrupting the user's journey. We decided to A/B test the alternate design solution without compromising the existing experience. To begin with, we gathered qualitative feedback in the initial stages to gauge user sentiment towards the new design. However, to quantify the results, we needed to conduct A/B testing, which required significant effort, as A/B tests are not typically done to test entire multi-page experiences. Nonetheless, by conducting A/B testing, we could measure the impact of the new design on key metrics such as conversion rates and bounce rates, and make data-driven decisions to optimize the user experience.

sdf

Overall online revenue before:

$3.38B

Overall online revenue after:

$3.45B

$7M Increase

(This was the result of the hard work of several efforts and teams)

Conclusion

After this initiative, we were able to achieve significant improvements in key performance metrics that had a substantial impact on the company's bottom line. Specifically, we were able to reduce abandonment rates and increase conversion rates for both the cart and checkout experiences. These improvements translated into millions of dollars in revenue for the company. However, the most important aspect of this initiative was the impact it had on the user. By streamlining the checkout and cart experiences and providing a more seamless journey, we were able to make it easier and more enjoyable for customers to complete their purchases. This resulted in increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, ultimately leading to long-term benefits for the company.