MEC Product Tagging
Role: Sr. Manager, Product & UX
The Problem
MEC can have up to 14,000 products online at any one time, which can become overwhelming for customers and make it difficult to discern which products may be right for them.
Additionally, MEC’s merchandising organization regularly invests in strategic but smaller product buys and has no way to showcase these special products. These types of products attributes include:
Special offers or time bound flash sales
Products that offer Plus sizes
In-cart discounts
Back in stock
The Challenge
Design and build a way for the web merchandising team to surface compelling product attributes on Product Listing Pages and Product Details pages
Design an MVP that can be used to test the concept quickly
Goals
Increase Click-through-rate from the Product Listing pages to the Product detail pages
Increase Add-to-cart rate
Approach
Define
First we needed to better understand the types of offers and product attributes in order to design and build the right solution.
We ran a workshop with the web merchandising team to discuss the different offer types, product attributes, and examples of inspiration that the group found compelling.
General offers (Bundles, BOGO, limited time sale)
In-cart discounts would require some sort of tagging functionality along with additional messaging on the product detail page directing customers to add the item to cart to see the discounted price.
Gift with purchase (buy an MEC item and get a free toque) would require the ability to add a gift to cart, as well as allow the customer to remove the item.
Product Attributes (Plus size, best seller, staff favorite) would likely have the same functionality as general offers but would require different design consideration.
We investigated how different retailers handled this problem and noted two major approaches, which included a heavy focus on promotional offers and badges. Some took a subtler approach using tags to showcase important product attributes in line with the brand.
2. Design
Taking a mobile-first approach, we began exploring the UX & Design. We wrote out initial user stories to
As a user I want to understand
As an MEC merchandiser, I want to add and edit product tags so that I can highlight certain products in the shopping journey
3. MVP Definition
4.
The MEC website doesn’t just serve customers, but it also supports store staff, customer service reps, and many other internal staffers across the business.
With many changes coming to the site, we needed to understand existing workflows that would be impacted. We interviewed key stakeholders to create staff workflows
At the end of this
Scan in-store product to start a web search
4. Socialization
We documented all existing user flows to ensure no experiences were missed in the replatforming process. For each major flow, an audit was conducted using customer feedback and analytics to help determine any areas of improvement.
Redesign mec.ca in line with new brand
Global design changes should be lightweight to help meet deadlines
Reduce friction in checkout
Improve search & browse experience
Ensure site structure remains sound for accessibility and SEO
5. Operationalize
Results
The first use of the tags was
Challenges
Previously, the MEC website required customers to create separate "membership" and "online account" credentials, which they then had to link either online or through customer service.
Our Assumption: We believed that combining the membership and login into a single account would simplify and improve the online experience.
Learnings: The concept of membership was deeply ingrained with our customers, and the change did not resonate as expected. Customers with in-store memberships but no online account struggled to log in or inadvertently created duplicate memberships.
I still believe it was the right direction, but with more research we could have found the right balance in the experience and messaging.