NewStore: In-Store Order Fulfillment
Role
Lead product designer
Skills
Mobile, research, UX, UI, strategy
Team
Product designer (me), product manager, engineering lead, development team
What is store fulfillment?
In-store order fulfillment refers to fulfilling customer orders directly from a retail store location. When a customer places an order online, the store staff retrieves the items from the store's inventory, prepares them for shipment, and ensures their timely delivery to the customer. This approach allows retailers to leverage their existing store network, optimizing inventory management and enabling faster order processing and delivery, ultimately providing customers with flexible options for receiving their purchases.
Situation
The NewStore order fulfillment solution had multiple pain points that weren’t addressed since its release. Users mentioned opportunities for improvement and they were known by the company as well. After my hackathon team pulled attention to the issues and a possible solution, the company was on board to invest more time and resources into it.
The goal of the project was to make the in-store order fulfillment scalable, faster and easier to use.
Problem space
The existing solution didn’t support big-scale order fulfillment, eg. hundreds of orders daily during Black Friday sales.
UX and feedback in the app were insufficient or confusing:
store associates weren’t able to see all the orders that were placed, just the total count.
store employees didn’t have visibility into who was working on an order, which caused inefficiency and missing on delivery times.
I joined the product trio dedicated to the team from the get-go, being responsible for all UX & UI-related tasks from discovery to working together with engineers during the delivery phase.
Team meeting with a client through Zoom video callsProcess and my contribution
Part of the strategy to make sure we build the right thing dictated that we would have some pilot group clients (a retailer) available for feedback/testing/interviews at frequent intervals, while they would get a direct opportunity to influence the solution being built. Initially, we aimed for an MVP which limited our options, as many clients had specific systems and ways of operating that took them out of our scope. During the search, we talked to many retailers, and even though they didn’t join the program, we got a lot of feedback on how to build and improve the product. On the other hand, it added pressure on us as the clients saw us working to solve problems they’d been looking to get rid of for a while.
My contributions across the project included:
story mapping workshop with the team,
weekly client interviews,
user journeys,
information architecture,
user flows,
wireframes,
visual design,
multiple rounds of user testing in-house and externally,
in cooperation with the product trio also prioritizing, figuring out iterations, and running workshops with the team.
User testing with the store manager in a customer's store, together with product trioOutcome
During the Black Friday in 2022, the new solution more than halved the order fulfillment time for a specific retailer (from 8 minutes to 3 minutes and 46 seconds per order)
This unlocked 1.3 million dollars of total order value weekly for the retailer.
All customers who have the new solution implemented are fulfilling more orders than last year at the same time, specifically during sales periods.
All clients using the current solution are in line to have the new solution deployed.
From an in-app survey, store employees agree that the solution is more user-friendly. Some quotes from our associates:
“It is very easy to use and maneuver and has made fulfilling orders very easy and simple.”
“Great user experience all around!”
Reach out to me to discuss further details and how I could help solve the pain points you are encountering.
