Objectives
This project was a dramatic renovation of an existing beta program. The Site to Store service allowed customers the option of shipping qualifying items to a Wal-Mart store for pickup with no shipping charge. The beta program involved only 200 stores and the user experience had been kluged together over a long time. For the rollout to all 3000+ Wal-Mart stores the experience needed to be honed to perfection.
Challenges
Because this launch would be highly publicized via many channels, including TV, the experience needed to live up to the hype. Every customer touchpoint needed to be examined and compared holistically with the entire flow of experience. The business wanted to emphasize that this was free shipping, while it was imperative that the user understand that they had to pick up the order in their store. The clarity of this message needed to be communicated throughout the experience, taking multiple use cases into account. Although the checkout flow was not ideal, it could not be changed due to resource constraints. One of the biggest challenges was that this rollout would not happen at once, but would be staged over several steps over the course of several months. Importantly, not all items qualified for the service, and the shipping time was longer than other delivery methods. There was no time available for user testing.
Solution
I reviewed the legacy wireframes from multiple releases and identified several areas that needed to be addressed to improve the experience. Several points of messaging were added across the site to promote the service. One of the greatest improvements was to the way the service was messaged in the cart. I devised a matrix of messaging based on the types of items in your cart, the shipping methods available, and the stage in the rollout process. I clarified the communication of the service throughout the checkout process, successfully proposing revised messaging strategies that remained within available scope.
