Target Findability

Search Box, Listing Pages, Facets

Goal

Improve the customer Search Experience by aligning the product roadmap to the customer journey and relieving pain points to increase site conversion and reduce bounce rate.

Challenges

  • The experience was the same for every user and wasn’t leveraging data or signals to personalize

  • Losing market share, conversion decreasing, and bounce rate increasing

  • Rudimentary and limited spaces optimized for monetization

  • Lack of progress due to organizational misalignment, resulting in slow, minor improvements

My Approach

  • Create a shared definition of the problem to promote alignment with stakeholders

  • Identify customer mindsets to build more personalized experiences

  • MVP focus on native apps due to an 80% usage of Search directly from Home Page and 99% sign in rate

Before: Target iOS app

Customer Journey

We leveraged user research and customer data to define the nuances of where Findability lives within the overall shopping step of the customer journey and told the story with a store-shopping metaphor to communicate to stakeholders the distinctions in the journey and challenges the team was facing.

Based on research and journey data, we prioritized our focus to answer the question: “Do you sell what I’m looking for?”

Customer Mindsets

To further illustrate nuances of this step in the journey, we evolved our Jobs to Be Done framework and created Findability Mindsets.

We illustrated real examples for each mindset that represent common reasons customers shop Target, creating a foundation for product and business teams to collaborate on new experiences that would meet the customer needs in new ways.

Vision Setting

With our prioritizes aligned to customer objectives and business outcomes, I coordinated and led a remote design sprint for the team to quickly ideate on an 18-month+ vision for the Findability experience for native apps.

Design Sprint Goal

How might we create a more personalized, joyful shopping experience that provides contextually relevant information to increase conversion rate and decrease bounce rate?

Approach

  • Remote 2-week sprint using Figma, Miro and Slack

  • Leverage the Digital Guest Lifecycle stages for ideation to increase personalized experiences

We leveraged data and research insights to inform the design sprint:

At the end of the design sprint, we had created mid-fidelity mocks for the Search box and Listing page experiences.

Search Box

Over 80% of users began their app shopping trip by using the Search Box. Stand-along search conversion rates were half of users who combined use of Search+Browse. We hypothesized that introducing Search+Browse paths from the Search Box would increase conversion, and that introducing more personalized shopping tools we would decrease a user’s overall time to build a basket.

Vision highlights:

  • Add persistent search box across entire top of funnel to provide quick access to move to the next task

  • Tailor the experience based on the category and the what we know about the customer

  • Offer multiple jumping-off points to convey broad assortment with more tools, direct paths to product, and recommendations

  • Introduce add-to-cart buttons for frequently purchased items to increase efficiency

  • Introduce new products or categories to encourage cross-category selling

Listing Page

The listing page is one of the highest-trafficked entry pages with a high bounce rate. We hypothesized that creating an experience that supports category-shopping behaviors and more tools to refine or expand the search would decrease the bounce rate and increase conversion.

Vision highlights:

  • Create contextual-experience enhancements that support distinct shopping behaviors between discretionary and frequency categories

  • Provide tools to quickly refine or expand their search

  • More opportunities to introduce monetization through relevant ads

Defining MVP

Once we gained alignment on the vision for the future experience, we collaborated with product and engineering to determine our quickest path to experience improvements that would impact the customer’s experience and the key business metrics.

Search Box

Over 80% of users began their app shopping trip by using the Search Box. Stand-along search conversion rates were half of users who combined use of Search+Browse. We hypothesized that introducing Search+Browse paths from the Search Box would increase conversion, and that introducing more personalized shopping tools we would decrease a user’s overall time to build a basket.

MVP highlights:

  • Add persistent search box across entire top of funnel to increase conversion

  • Conversational copy to be more welcoming and on-brand

  • Quick tools for category or facets to improve relevancy

Listing Page

The listing page is one of the highest-trafficked entry pages with a high bounce rate. We hypothesized that creating an experience that supports category-shopping behaviors and more tools to refine or expand the search would decrease the bounce rate and increase conversion.

MVP highlights:

  • Enhanced, more visually engaging experience for Discretionary shopping

  • Enhanced tools to improve speed, such as add to cart buttons, for Frequency shopping

  • Provide tools to quickly refine or expand their search

  • More opportunities to introduce monetization through relevant ads

Outcomes

  • Established new product pillar team-of-teams focused on Findability; grew design team from 2 to 8 within six months

  • Customer-centric product roadmap prioritization

  • Established 18+ month vision to expand personalization and relevance using data and customer shopping behavior

  • Established repeatable framework for ideating and communicating the dynamic nature of a personalized digital experience

  • Persistent search shows early signs of increased conversion

    MVP work is currently in-flight