LISA ZANGERL
PRODUCT DESIGNER & MANAGER
Visual Design by Justin Henry
Wayfair Homepage Redesign
The two primary objectives of the Homepage Redesign project were to integrate more personalized content into the homepage and increase engagement in the app. The team wanted to provide an enhanced user experience that allowed users access to what would be most useful to them from the Homepage.
Platform: Native Apps
Role: UX Designer
Skills: Competitive analysis, user testing, wireframing, prototyping, collaboration
Kickoff
I took screenshots of the current app homepage (shown on the left) and mapped out the different sections. Next, I met with the key stakeholders to understand their business challenges and constructed a shared vision for the app homepage.
Whiteboard & Wireframes
After gathering project needs from stakeholders and sketching out ideas we decided the updates to the homepage would roll out in two phases. The first phase would include personalized product recommendations and the second phase would be an adaptive homepage based on user activity within the app.
After creating several wireframes, the final design for phase one of the homepage included the addition of "Recently Viewed Items" and "Recommended Items" cards for logged in users. I also recommended limiting daily sales to four on the homepage and only showing sales that would be most relevant to the user based on their history in the app. For logged out users the design included the addition of a "Best Sellers" card that showed featured products.
User Testing
I conducted longitudinal tests of the app homepage to gain insight into user needs and expectations. For the first test, I started with the current homepage design then moved onto a prototype with the new proposed designs which included personalized product recommendations, recently viewed items, and sales. That last part of the test included a card sorting exercise where participants were asked to sort these items by importance: Shipping Info, Idea Boards History, Recommended Items, Your Recently Viewed, Items Sales, and Recent Searches.
The results of the card sorting exercise:
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5/8 users ranked “Shipping Info” as most important to them
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5/8 users gave “Idea Boards Recent History” a ranking of 3 or higher
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5/8 users placed “Sales” as the 5th item of importance to them
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3/8 users ranked “Recent Searches” with the lowest importance to them
Final Direction
I shared the user testing results with project managers and with this research in mind we began the second design phase called Adaptive Homepage. This project involved the addition of a dynamic content block that would change based on the user’s behavior within the app. The objective was to teach users about creating an idea board, increase sharing of idea boards, and allow users to track packages without needing to go into their account.
The final designs included tracking a package, sharing an idea board, and creating an idea board from a most viewed item. The logic for revealing these three features was based on the level of importance to the user. "Track My Order" would show before the other features because it provided the most important information to the user. However, if there was no order to track, but the user had an idea board, then it would show the "Share Idea Board" feature. Lastly, if the user did not have an order to track or an idea board then the "Save to an Idea Board" feature would be shown.
