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Assisted comparison

The driving idea behind the assisted comparison in e-commerce came out from observation of the user behavior and their search patterns on the webshop. In 2020 I was assigned to lead the project that will explore opportunities and utilize user curation for better user experience. This project was done completely remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic, which required some adjusted approaches in the ideation phase and team collaboration.

Two main archetypes

As most general type e-commerce web stores have a very broad spectrum of users, it can result in a large number of UX personas. However, it’s also very useful to remind ourselves of the phrase “users wear many hats”. Indeed, what we as designers see as a persona, can be anyone with the same goal, just on a different day. For example, while the webshop from this case study has 8 main types of personas, analysis of their search patterns showed that we can put them in two main buckets. Based on this insight, we created two Persona archetypes

Users with a SPECIFIC NEED are searching for a specific item. We can think of it as a unique, branded item with narrow-defined specifications or tags. They will make their purchase decision comparing primarily by the price.
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Users with a GENERIC NEED are searching for an unbranded, non-unique product. They don’t have a narrow-defined selection and they are considering significantly more factors before making a purchase decision.

Getit Gerrit

Gerrit wants to buy Air Jordan 1 sneakers and he is looking for the best deal. He is our user with a SPECIFIC need.

Searchit Sonia

Sonia's friend likes running and she is looking for a present to buy. Sonia is our GENERIC needs user.

Challenge & Opportunities

  • Sonia, at this point in the user journey, is still not in the “buying mode” but rather in full research mode. Perhaps by showing her items that will match her interest and criteria, we can move her much closer to the purchase decision. Can we design a feature that will help them make this choice in a natural and seamless way?

  • Users need to have an option to save their comparison progress and continue with their decision at their convenience. This should also be without making them invest additional effort.

  • There is an opportunity to find out more about our users by providing them a permanent increased value with more functionalities with a created account.

Project Kickoff

I started this project officially with an online kickoff planning. The purpose of this exercise was to define goals, functionalities, and minimum requirements for the MVP design solution. We had timed sessions for ideation, followed up with voting on proposals for each defining category. The outcome served as a set of guidelines with clear boundaries for our project.

GOALS (in order of given votes):

  1. Allow users to curate their own ways of comparison
  2. Give users functionality to find, select, and quickly decide which product is better.
  3. Provide top UX solution for saving the “decision-making process”.
  4. Provide a unique solution to ULC, something new to the market (or underused)

FUNCTIONALITIES (in order of given votes):

  1. Attractive saving-function; Save products; Save progress; Organize your selection (sorting?)
  2. A persistent area throughout the whole experience where saved products can be quickly accessed
  3. Related products
  4. Add / Remove from the comparison area
  5. Compare products; Comparison feature; Essential comparison before adding to the comparison bucket
  6. Have products recommended based on what has been saved/collected/browsed
  7. Price alerts

MVP functionalities

  1. Save
  2. Compare
  3. Related items

First ideations (and mistakes)

First ideation phase was supposed to be very quick. The expected outcome was that each designer presents a quick draft solution, and then we together discuss designs and make a decision on which direction to take together. However, this is where I made a mistake as a project lead as I allowed too much time for this phase pressured by other ongoing tasks and some team members who were not feeling ready and asked for more time. As it turned out, with more time on their hands, designers went more into details with their concepts and “fell in love” with their solutions. Naturally, when they presented their work, it became obvious that we now have a few very different concepts that will be hard to merge. We could have just pick one and continue but I really wanted the entire team to feel the ownership of this project, so I decided to take us two steps back in order to take the next step together. I asked my team to take that afternoon time to look into all concepts and write down for every concept 3 things they like, and one thing they don’t like. When we got back tomorrow, we had a refined list of things we should focus on.

 

Refined concept key features:

  • Saving and naming the search [4 votes]
  • Collapsable container with items marked for comparison (always available) [3 votes]
  • Similar items recommended [3 votes]
  • Collecting in folders / Lists
  • Keep separation of Fav and Compare functionalities

Concept Wireframes

High Fidelity Designs