I was on a 6 month contract at the Bloom & Wild Group, where I was a product designer leading the iOS and Android app designs across 2 brands. My main focus was introducing a new tab on the app that we called 'What's New', this case study outlines the journey!
In this role, I also focused on raising awareness of the expanding range through the onboarding, landing and discovery experience and worked on improving customer loyalty. In addition to App specific work, I contributed components and documentation to the design system that flexed across web and the apps.
Role
Tools
TEAM/Stakeholders
Timeline
4 months
Problem
Customers have limited awareness of the multi-category products and other gifting options that Bloom & Wild offer. New categories are launching semi-regularly, however customers aren't used to seeing them. The only way to drive awareness currently is through in-app messages. However, these can only be used sparingly as they are jarring to the customer experience and they are discount-focused. Could there be a way we could use a form of persistent in-app messages - perhaps content cards to ensure customers were aware of the discounts we offered along with the growing range? We re-evaluated the app to see where a potential solution like this could live.
How might we create incremental demand for non-core products by increasing awareness and desire of the expanding range on the App?
Business Context
A look at the existing app
Taking a look at the current main navigation bar, we questioned the Help tabs placement. Finding help quickly was important, and we didn't want to impact the ease at which customers found our help section.
After looking at how the amount of engagement Help gets, benchmarking, and with the understanding that Help is already in the Account section, we felt we could make a good bet on removing it from the nav bar - but we were looking to get this validated in the a/b test.
Help Tab
In-app messages are meant to disrupt the user experience and grab the user's attention to display a relevant and enticing message - perhaps a discount. However, after analyzing Bloom & Wild's current in-app messages and speaking to customers, it was clear it was not that effective.
With a fixed location, being limited to one per customer, constraints around copy, style and how often we were able to send out an in-app message along with the lack of clarity of how to dismiss it, or scroll away from it, there was a clear reason to optimize how we communicate to users in-app.
(we quickly realized this was going to require a lot of time beyond the new tab - so it ended up being a separate project that we did a bit later)
In-App message
Hypothesis
Objective: Inspire our customers to explore our expanding ranges on the Apps and make them easier to navigate.
By...reorganizing our tab bar to include a new content tab, that surfaces dynamic, targeted content
We expect...users to be inspired to explore our expanding range
Leading to...an increase in order conversion, without impacting the ease of other shopping missions such as getting Help.
Collaborating with stakeholders
I brought the idea of a permanent home for communication to the development team early on to understand the technical considerations of removing the Help tab and introducing a new tab with changing content.
The dev team made it clear that removing the Help tab wouldn't be an issue as we already had the content living in the Account tab. In terms of placement, the easiest thing to do would be simply replace the Help tab location (furthest right of the nav bar) while having it as the landing page would be the most complicated and would take longer to implement.
The marketing team were our main stakeholders as they ran the content for in-app messages and would run some of the content for the new content tab.
The original idea was to remove in-app messages from the shop grid completely, and have them live in the new tab. After running a collaborative workshop and discussion with the team, it was clear that we couldn't remove in-app messages from the grid just yet as they were important to target customers who opted out of notifications and external communications.
As a compromise, we decided to keep the current in-app messages, but improve them as much as possible (this ended up being a project on it's own), and while we a/b tested our MVP and gained insights from it, and have customers learn along the way, we could hopefully slowly have the in-app messages live in the new content tab permanently, and keep the shop grid focused on displaying our products.
This was output after the meetings with development and marketing
Constraints, Early Testing & Refinements
To develop this new tab, we were going to be working with Braze which is a customer engagement platform (a platform we were already using for other parts of the app). Braze has a 'walk' and 'run' approach - walk means you work within the boxes and design elements they provide and run means you are able to customize to your heart's content.
For the MVP, we were going down the 'walk' approach so we could launch and learn quickly about how customer felt about the content and engaged with the tab, and then we could apply those learning's to MVP2 once we started 'running' with Braze. Working in the 'walk' approach meant I had to design within the the content blocks Braze provided. There were only a few to select from and they had distinct formatting as you can see to the right.
Braze components
I developed 3 prototypes with different tab names and put it through unmoderated user testing to get customers input on expectations of the new tab, the content, along with the name.
Initial prototype
The tab was broken up into three sections of content so that it would be easy to comprehend and to maintain.
Other elements of the tab were as follows:
The initial look of the MVP
....and then we ran into additional constraints
We thought we had gotten to a good place for the dev team to do some technical spiking ....however, we quickly found out there were going to be quite a lot of design limitations developing in Braze.
To customize everything at this stage would require a lot of technical effort. Since we were still in the learning stages and had room to iterate and to eventually customize with Braze, I agreed to find some design compromises that aligned with what would work best.
As you can see to the right, essentially all elements of the designs had to be compromised. However, I kept note of what needed to be implemented for the tab post-MVP.
A breakdown of the constraints
What we got to
I did a whole lot of stress testing on how we could optimize the tab and ensure it aligned with our brands look even within the confines...here are some notes on the process
Finalized MVP
A/B Test results - the variant was a success!
After finalizing out MVP, we got it into development and rolled out the variant just ahead of Christmas. However, a month in, we realized there was a glitch with the test and there weren't the same number of users in each group.
We rectified the issue and then relaunched the test mid-January where we finally got results. Overall, the test was a success and we were confident about pushing the variant to all users.
Here are some highlights of what the test revealed:
Original tab bar on the app
Post-MVP life: New hypotheses and moderated user testing
With the MVP launched to all customers, we decided to look ahead at what can come next for the What's New tab.
I felt it was important to have some qualitative research and speak to actual customers about their thoughts on the new tab. This would be a good opportunity to test out new additions to the tab and validate some hypotheses.
While the new tab was a success, the stickiness was low. With the 3 sections of content, customer would click on the CTA and then be brought away from the tab. How might we increase engagement and stickiness of this new feature and the overall app?
One way we hypothesized of increasing engagement was introducing a carousel component that was flexible for multiple use cases, and was interactive within the tab - while allowing customers to also drill down into further details. This way, customers would constantly have a way of being introduced to new products, categories, and third-party collaborations.
Spotlight carousel
(Final design)
Category carousel
(Final design)
My PM and I interviewed 6 customers via Userlytics to better understand user expectations and impression of the tab and to validate designs for showcasing specific ranges.
Overall, the components and content were successful and we were confident about moving forward with them.
Here are some additional highlights:
Screenshots of the prototype we tested. This displays older iterations of the carousel components.
Throughout the journey of developing the MVP and what could come after, I had been taking note and brainstorming with the PM, and the BI analyst of what the North Star could be for the What's New tab.
A big proponent is that we didn't want the What's New tab to simply be a place with generic un-engaging content that simply just flashed products. We had a good basis on interactive and engaging elements but we started to consider how we could incorporate the tab into more of a journey with the customer and their purchasing history and how to encourage them to return more frequently.
Based on our learnings from user testing and iterations, I've created this high level visual of what the journey of the What's New tab could be.
Where I left off: When I left Bloom & Wild, the carousel components were about to be developed for iOS along with the Android developers doing technical spiking to introduce the What's New tab on the android app. There were alot more changes to the Android app that needed to happen before the new tab could be implemented.
Summary: To grow awareness of Bloom & Wild's evolving brand propositions and multi-category range, to increase incremental orders and have no negative impact on short-term CVR, we created a permanent space on the app to surface relevant content -such as offer, new products/category launches and potentially other brand news). As Bloom & Wild continues to learn from the app, there is the hope to grow it into a more personalized hub of content that is even more engaging and relevant to customers and as a result increase CVR, stickiness and loyalty.
Working on this new feature among other projects, was a great experience! Bloom & Wild is a wonderful and collaborative work environment so collaborating with stakeholders and the teams was seamless. It was exciting to be part of an big new feature launch that can hopefully change the way customers view the company and shop within the app.
