Figuring out why so much drop

storesLink_Hero.jpg

User expectations. It’s that simple.

Being a guide for our visitors when they come to the mall was definitely one of the principles for the Westfield Shopping app. Our users should easily be able to open the app, find a store, and navigate to it, right? Was this happening? Short answer - no.  We found that there was a significant drop off during the finding a store flow on our iOS platform. Retailer pages were not being visited and that was not good for our users, or our retailers. With a little bit of research and understanding, we were able to come up with a solution that is very promising.

 

Goals

  • Gain better understanding of user flow expectations

  • Increase conversion to retailer detail pages

  • Increase value for the user

Research Methodologies

  • User research - Google Analytics

  • User interviews/testing - Guerrilla style, in the mall with 15 visitors

  • Quick ideation - Sketches, wireframes, mockups and prototypes

Some of the numbers

  • 92% of users tapped on the Stores link in the tab bar after opening the app for the first time and encounter a list of categories for stores,

  • 50% of those users continued to the next screen, which was another list of deeper categories,

  • 47% of those users closed the app after landing on that screen!

  • 100% of the team was like "What?"

Screenshot of google analytics - Example behavior flow

 

Synthesis from initial findings

After conducting research, which included the use of Google analytics, user research, and usability testing (which we relied on mostly), we quickly saw a pattern come up. We were not only seeing the same behavior as the analytics, but getting insight on why. It really was all about user expectations and how we were presenting content to meet those expectations. 

What the users did and said

  • When asked to navigate to a particular retailer in the directory, users would navigate mirroring the data, but did not give up as easily as the data showed. Users persisted on and eventually through a search, or a little back and forth, users would get to a retailer page.

  • Users would often comment about not being able to see a list of stores right away. They expected to see some sort of list of stores after they tapped 'Stores'. Crazy right?

  • Users only used the global search on the home page after giving up on the category tree. One comment included "Well, I guess I'll try to type it in..."

What we took away from the research

  • Users needed a way to get to the list of stores faster or more intuitively

  • Align with the mental model our users were operating by

  • The solution would have to be elegant enough when listing 400+ stores

  • User will not likely scroll forever to find a store

 

Solution

We got to the drawing board and came up with a few different interactive prototypes to run by some of our users in the mall. The prototype interaction models were as follows:

  • Present full list of stores after tapping on the 'Stores' link in tab bar

  • Present a grid of stores pre-filtered by category that can easily be set by user after landing

  • Present a combination of category list and full retail stores grid

 

So, what will happen next?

More user testing I am sure. We will determine what direction to go into A/B testing with. We plan on releasing changes to a  group of about 2k users initially to get some feedback and data on the new interaction model.