Design bar is a high traffic feature of Decorist that sees a lot of engagement. The goal of this page is to give users a free trial of the Decorist experience where a real, live designer gives a bespoke answer to the user’s questions.
PROJECT GOAL
Increase the conversion of recommended products by 10-15%
Increase the amount of paid projects after a question has been answered
WHAT WE KNOW
Working with PM, analytics and research I gathered information about user behavior on this page. Types of information I gathered were:
How users found this page
Where in the design process do users use this service
Desktop vs Mobile traffic
Conversion rate of this page compared to paid projects
User’s likihood of converting to a paid project
User’s budgets
Likihood of buying a similar item at another retailer after a design bar experience
DESIGN GOALS
Emphasize the conversational, bespoke aspect of the design advice
Encourage the 26% users who are buying from other retailers to stay and purchase from Decorist
Make it easier to convert to a paid project
Better integrate the shopping list into the page and update with common commerce patterns to encourage and facilitate a shopping flow
General clean up to focus users on the interaction with the designer, the products recommended and the next steps in their design journey
Ensure page remains mobile friendly (half the page up until more items to shop is responsive)
Limited to front end changes or can be built on top of existing technology
DESIGN RECOMMENDATIONS
Emphasize the conversational, bespoke aspect of the design advice:
Move shopping list closer to the hero image
Leverage the optional comment of the ‘Add a tag’ feature to bring the written advice closer to the visual representation of the recommendation
Repeated use of designer’s avatar to reinforce the idea of 1:1 conversation
Allow 1 followup question, which reinforces the conversation and primes the user to look at that area of the page when they come back
Encourage users to stay and buy on Decorist
Highlight the value prop of shopping Decorist, de-emphasize the fine print
Use the social construct of reciprocity (you’ll be supporting the designer who gave your free advice) to encourage users to stay
Give users some (but not too much) options though the use of the recommendation engine
Make it easier to convert to a paid project
Emphasize the ‘next step’ of continuing the conversation is to buy a project
Update with common design patterns to encourage shopping
Use buttons to add to cart instead of check boxes
Allow adding multiple items to cart as a bundle
Use a product detail layout on the modal that doesn’t require a verti cal scroll
pull in a ‘why buy from Decorist’ value prop by all ‘buy’ CTAs
BEFORE
AFTER
This was necessary for several reasons:
First, updates made to the purchase flow almost always result in a short-term dip in conversion numbers, and we need to give our business analyst team a granular breakdown of changes to the site.
Second, there was both a update in the layout of the page as well as major new functionality and it was important to isolate the effects of each.
Finally, we used it to build in time to make changes once we saw how users behaved on the live site.
