Slickdeals Redesign
A 20-year-old company has entered the Shopping Extension chat.
BACKGROUND
MY ROLE
UX/UI Designer. Responsible for discovery, research, and redesign of the new extension and all surrounding collateral.
TIMELINE
3 Months (April 2022 -June 2022)
TOOLS
Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, Userinterviews.com, unmoderated testing.
Since 1999, Slickdeals has been helping deal seekers find the best prices on products. Through a community-based website, users post the best deals and others validate them through comments and reactions.
In 2018, Slickdeals decided to launch a shopping Extension to compete with other eCommerce companies. With a successful launch, the company saw a significant increase in revenue over 3 years, but a decrease in retension. Our team set out to explore why this decline was happening within our userbase.
Problem.
2.5 years after the initial launch of the Slickdeals Shopping Extension, in the shopping extension space, there had been a heavy concentration in the acquisition and ramping up monthly active users. Since then, the team has seen consistent growth in extension installs and registrations, but a decrease in retention.
With an increase in uninstallations of the extension, we came to see that no general research had been done around the extension since early 2020. We set out to change that and make necessary updates to address immediate user pain points.
How might we increase retention within the extension?
CURRENT LANDSCAPE
The current landscape for the Slickdeals Extension focuses on acting as an extension (no pun intended) of the core website, There aren’t many distinguishing traits apart from the coupon auto applier in checkout.
The extension team needed to take a look stock of user pain points.
Diving into the research.
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Understanding user pain points at large within the extension.
Understand the behaviors of all the points of acquisition for the extension.
What do our users value in a shopping journey?
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We sent out a survey to 30K users, 10K of which have transacted 1 time a month for 6 months and 28K users who have installed the extension within the last month.
After receiving the initial responses, we began to affinity map all the written responses to synthesize.
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To get a better understanding of user pain points within the shopping extension world, I chose to interview an important group of users that were flagged by our analyst — the 15-minute uninstall cohort.
The idea was to get an understanding as to why users would be uninstalling the extension within the first 24-hour window, then address that in our redesign.
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Honey | Rakuten | RetailMeNot | CaptialOne
From past analysis, we had an idea of how other shopping extensions were designing for their user pain points. Here, we dove into each extension by feature: cart coupon applier, cashback, extension window.
Key Findings
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1. There is no cashback presence
When the extension initially launched, cashback has yet to become an offering. Once cashback launched, the users were excited to earn but there was no direct user journey flow.
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2. Coupons are inconsistent
We’ve heard this one before. Users have a hard time understanding which coupons failed and which have been applied to their cart. Beyond this, the biggest user pain point is the failing coupons.
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3. Deal misunderstanding
With the largest deal community out there, somehow the extension was not clearly showcasing deals to their users. Aside from blindly pulling deals from the front page, there is no level of customization to what users are seeing within the extension window.
User Journey Mapping.
As we began to explore design options, we discovered that there had never been a user journey map made around the extension. We set out to define intent throughout the user journey to best understand where opportunities lie in the future.
Design Studio.
WHO: Extension team, Loyalty team, Lifecycle Marketing team, Product Managers.
How might we design an Extension window that helps users through their shopping journey?
WHAT: Team members brainstormed ways that the extension can best aid in a user’s shopping journey. We took these ideas and implemented in our mocks.
Wireframes and Mockups.
Immediately after dissecting all of the research, we began to mock up wireframes to showcase flows to the dev team, this way we were going into the mi-fi design phase with an idea of what was feasible.
After receiving feedback from the dev team, as well as the broader Slickdeals teams, we moved into mid-fi mocks and defined user flows.
Final Designs
Final Designs
Cashback.
Users will now be able to see their cashback balance from each tab within the extension window.
The cashback activation will now be found at the top whenever a user opens the window on a merchant homepage.
Each individual online transaction will be processed in the window to assure a user that their cashback was recognized and inform the step in redemption.
Point redemption will be linked out directly from the window, no need to search much further.
The profile tab of the window is now a Rewards Hub rather than solely dedicated to settings.
Coupons.
With the uncertainty of coupon success at stake, we decided to give users more transparency into the likelihood that their coupon code will work at checkout through a Coupon Success Graph.
With some stores averaging 10+ coupons, users get confused about which is most likely to work for them. Introducing, Last Successful Coupon to add further clarity into which coupons specifically are actively working. At the end of the day, Slickdealers rely on one another to make informed decisions.
Deals.
We’ve taken the deal cards within the window and redesigned the appearance. Past Slickdeals users understand the nuances of deal hunting, whereas a net new user may not. Clarifying the deal card UI to showcase digestible information at a glance.
Other Wins.
Our developers have stayed up to date with security protocols around logging a user in. We were informed that registration inside the actual extension window is not the safest, and thus, we’d like to move away. In an effort to keep our log-in smooth, we designed an inextension sign-in button that would trigger a floating log-in window. Once a user signs in, we’ll close the window and allow the user to continue on with their browsing journey.
Combining four tabs into three. Keeping the window simple and developing a home base.
Shifting gears.
As we moved into production, stakeholders delivered our team a different set of KPIs focused on increasing deal out clicks as a business. This would change the general design and strategy of our extension window.
Our team got together in a design studio to review previous research and ideate.
How might we increase deal out-clicks in the extension window?
In order to distinguish our shopping extension from competitors who don’t have the ability to surface deals, we would need a modern and consumer friendly design to encourage exploration. We began to iterate on UI cards to test what design would likely increase engagement.
Determining what information is useful and necessary to get a user to click on a deal is the current challenge. Between price drops, percentage off, product titles, product images, or our community insights – we set out to begin testing which UI component would benefit the user most.
Testing and iterations.
From previous data, we know what information is useful when shopping online, but in reality, user behaviors tend to flow differently based on the state of mind and type of merchant.
While we don’t have the answers yet, we have begun to surface different deal notifications to users as they land on a merchant homepage through an A/B test. This will help inform which UI component is most useful and trustworthy.
Once we receive data around these tests, the updated extension window will feature the newest deal cards.
Retrospective.
ITERATION
Though rewards took the largest chunk of time, what the research revealed was a product that hadn’t been updated in almost two years - yet patched up with plenty of bandaids. Hearing the frustrations around active usage was compelling and the dedication to Slickdeals shows us that our users are hoping for the best for the product. With this encouragement, we’ve planned out an elaborate 18-month roadmap to update and innovate the extension.
If I could wave a magic wand and produce more time for this redesign, I would have sent out an unmoderated usability test before launching A/B tests around the window, but that’s just how the cookie crumbles. As we roll out our new features, our team will prioritize continuous discovery around friction that our users encounter.
NEXT STEPS
Running A/B tests around the deal card designs.
We have begun to A/B test certain windows with cohorts of users to gain insight into the launch strategy for the overall window.
With insight from the user journey map exercise, we gained much knowledge on the product roadmap for new features including in-app reviews, improved comment fields, and updating the onboarding process.
Onboarding. This will take a decent chunk of time in the interim with one goal in mind – to decrease uninstallations amongst new users. Onboarding serves as the very first interaction with your product, and at the moment, we have none.