Target
The project: Site Optimization – SWAT team
My role: UX Commerce Expert
Once Target re-platformed and gained control of their digital properties from Amazon, they ran into a multitude of user issues.
Based on my ecommerce experience, I was immediately brought in post-launch to lead a SWAT team to provide optimization recommendations. We had to move fast in our assessment work and prioritize which aspects of the site needed the most attention. After analyzing the customer insight reports and analytics it was clear that the users were having the most trouble with product findability so we focused our efforts on the Navigation and Category pages to see why the users we’re getting stuck.
Additional points:
The results of our work we’re surprising for internal teams at Target and I personally spent 2 weeks presenting our findings across the organization.
Many of the tactics of the project became part of a new practice that I would later lead for Sapient that focused on ecommerce optimization.
After the success of our SWAT team efforts, my stint at Target continued for another 10 months on various projects geared to optimize the experience and increase revenue.
Feature: Header issues
The header was built for aesthetics not for utility. It was too heavy to have on every screen of the site, but Target teams didn’t truly understand how big of an issue this was until they saw our assessment findings. The distribution of the elements was also eschewed, but there was a lot built into the header that was difficult to fix without fundamentally changing the design. Some serious compromises and creative exploration we’re going to have to be made in the coming months.
Feature: Taxonomy vs. catalog
The taxonomy of the site was another area that was going to take time untangling. First, we had to show how it was effecting the user experience. Several patterns pointed to why users were having so much trouble with the new site design:
The top header and first level of categories were too dense to easily digest.
The terminology was confusing for users because it was a direct lift from the internal product catalog, not modified for user consumption.
The structurally the system was not dynamic enough to allow for customized results from category to category – essentially there was only one way to find deeper categories and that isn’t how all users shop.
In the end, the taxonomy was going to have to be completely pulled apart and put back together again.
Feature: Purchase flow
One of the biggest complaints we heard from users was that they “felt they had gone too far” or couldn’t figure out “how to go back up”. As we would uncover, this had a lot to do with how the category templates and navigation were being put together. The two needed to work hand in hand, but weren’t. It was clear that no one was considering the paths that users travel down, and were just putting the product catalog against a bunch of different template types that were provided to them. The (newly minted) internal teams at Target still needed a lot of guidance.
The category templates themselves were quite complex. In the desire to have flexibility, the Target teams had requested a variety of template variations to be created. Unfortunately, they were not being used in a systemic way. The sheer amount of types and variations of templates being used on the site was creating a jarring experience for users. Utility and a set system of purchase funnel screens is expected from a large retailer like Target, a site that users come back to with tremendous frequency. Knowing how the system works allows them to easily navigate it and find the deals, new finds and repeat products they love from Target.
Feature: Too many templates
Feature: Category page pitfalls
Somehow in all of the excitement for a brand new design, critical ecommerce best practices were thrown out the window. Most of the effort went into creating a single story with supporting products. This design mechanism took up the majority of the screen above the fold, and in certain instances was the only thing on a category page. On top of that, there wasn’t much on the page that was clickable (a personal pet peeve). The templates were going to have to be re-hauled to allow for more merchandising, in-page navigation, product assortment and promotions. And the storytelling element was going to have to work harder.
Feature: The blue dress story
I created the blue dress story to mimic several paths a user might take to find the same product. Walking through the illustrations was probably the first-time Target execs had looked at the same journey of a user from a statistical, UI and organizational level.
In one story, we we’re able to point to how the traffic was evenly distributed – yet user expectations were not being met in navigation or product browsing, and the resources to maintain these primary site capabilities were grossly disproportionate.
This goes back to the fact that (at the time), Target had put a lot of emphasis, pride and money around the storytelling idea of the new site. Utility and balance were going to have to come back into the customer experience and the organizational structure.
