Project: Kroger Pickup Desktop & Mobile Enhancements
When you are a user experience focused human you cannot help but pick apart, evaluate, and dream of improvements for products and services you use often. As an avid customer of Kroger and user of their Pickup option, I saw many opportunities for improvement across the entire customer experience. Knowing that the COVID-19 pandemic caused many to shift to online grocery shopping, I thought it would be a fun project to explore how to improve Kroger's Pickup experience.
My role: UX Strategist
Activities: User Interviews, Surveys, Competitive Analysis, Journey Mapping, Wireframing + Prototyping, Testing
The Challenge
COVID-19 is changing the way many Americans shop today. With limited restaurant and eating out options, customers are relying more heavily on grocery shopping, especially online grocery shopping. Many stores offer online shopping and curbside pick-up of groceries while others allow for third-party services like Instacart to shop for customers. Kroger released their online ordering service called Clicklist in 2016, now called Pickup, that lets customers shop online for their items and pick-up their order at the store location of their choosing or have it delivered via Instacart.
With the surge in demand and important shift for the industry as a result of COVID-19 Kroger needs to enhance their online shopping and pickup/delivery experience to serve the varied preferences of their customers when they are relying on their Pickup service more than ever. I decided to explore how might Kroger enhance their checkout and post-checkout experience?
High-level Goals
- Be the top trusted online shopping experience.
- Improve order satisfaction rating
- Reduce # of order complaints
Process
Discover
- Performed a SWOT analysis for Kroger Pickup and competitive analysis to understand how top competitors like Walmart, Amazon Fresh, and Whole Foods position themselves, target their customers, and overall compare to Kroger Pickup.
- Created a survey for shoppers who confirmed that they shop online for their groceries almost exclusively to understand their shopping habits and pain points in their experience.
- Conducted follow up interviews with survey respondents to dive deeper into their answers and understand their thoughts and feelings around shopping for groceries online with Kroger.
- Developed a customer persona to base solutions on.
- Mapped the customer journey including touch points, thoughts and feelings, and opportunities for improvement.
The Power Shopper Persona
The Power Shopper cares most about maximizing their time and routines. They have a jam-packed schedule and not a lot of mental energy left to worry about grocery shopping. They shop multiple times a month and know what they prefer. They want to ensure their online shopping experience is simple, time-saving, and transparent.
Pain Points
- Worried about the wrongs items being selected by the shopper.
- There is no way to choose substitutions and alerts about them are inconsistent.
- Has to compromise on brand/item because the inventory isn’t always up to date.
- Cannot indicate special notes for each item, especially produce.
Jobs To Be Done
- Easily find and add items to order
- Know if items are out of stock or require substitutions
- Pre-select substitutions
- Select flexible pickup and delivery times and preferences
The Power Shopper's Journey
Define
- Using insights from research, I developed How Might We statements to brainstorm solutions to customer pain points.
- Crafted user stories to inform ideation and design.
How Might We
ensure order accuracy?
increase transparency during shopping and order fulfillment?
streamline pickup and delievery?
User Stories
As a Pickup customer, I want to view suggestions of and select substitutes for my item in my cart pre-checkout, so that I do not have to worry about my shopper selecting an unsatisfactory substitute.
As Pickup customer, I need the ability to chat directly with my shopper while they are shopping for my groceries, so that I can answer questions or approve substitutions.
As Pickup customer, I want the ability to select plastic, paper, or personal bags for my groceries to be bagged in during checkout, so that I can make environmentally friendly choices if I prefer.
Ideate
- Sketched wireframes and crafted hi-fi design of the desktop and mobile flows using Kroger's existing design guidelines.
Sketches
Hi-Fi Design
* Mobile still WIP
Validate
To determine if my desktop designs were on the right track I:
- Tested the design's usability.
- Captured user feedback to identify areas of improvement.
Methods
Remote moderated testing:
- Planned and executed virtual moderated testing of the designs using video conferencing, screen sharing, and Figma prototyping.
- Developed scripts and test scenarios to be utilized.
- Moderated live sessions with 5 users who responded to the original survey.
Follow up surveys + interviews:
- Sent follow-up survey to gauge users' level of satisfaction with the proposed solution.
- Interviewed 3 participants to learn more about their thoughts and feelings while testing the designs.
Findings
- Participants found the checkout experience to be more clear and the ability to choose substitutions increased their trust that their shopper would pick satisfactory items.
- 2 out of 3 participants interviewed mentioned still wanting a better solution for applying paper coupons to orders.
- 1 out of 3 participants interviewed mentioned the ability to choose bagging preference was a small but important feature as a Pickup customer.
Next Steps
- Complete Hi-Fi designs of the mobile shopping and Pickup experience.
- Plan and execute testing of mobile designs.
- Improve upon desktop and mobile experience.
- Plan and execute testing of desktop and mobile designs and how they intersect.