Online Retail Shopping

UXR for Online Retail: Target.com

Case Study Spotlight

Ad hoc combination generative/evaluative research study about customer behaviors and preferences that helped shape Target's online shopping experience, 2019

What I did

I was the sole UXR running this high-impact study: I created the research plan and moderator guide based on meetings with client stakeholders where we distilled their research questions into a script and stimuli that would allow for both discovery-level activities and detailed feedback on site elements. Then I ran the sessions while engaging stakeholder observers behind the scenes to incorporate questions that came up organically during individual sessions. After providing a quick topline summary, I analyzed the session recordings and synthesized the findings. I delivered a fully designed deck that addressed the original research questions while adding depth based on emerging themes, including info graphics and illustrations.

Deliverables

Research plan, moderator guide, session stimuli built with assets from Target design team (Slides, Figma), in-depth report including quotes, video clips, and recommendations.

Impact & Outcomes

As well as gathering detailed feedback about the current post-order experience and perceptions of Target's competitors, this ad hoc study uncovered opportunities to clarify listings, streamline purchase flows, and highlight information customers wanted most to improve merchant performance. The report brought the voice of consumers into focus for actionable listing design guidance.

Context & Business Challenges

As Target.com was building out their marketplace, they were adding more and more third party sellers, similar to Walmart and the third-party juggernaut, Amazon. Third party sellers are Target partners who can create listings to sell through Target.com, but the systems that they used to set up the listings ended up creating inconsistent experiences for online shoppers. The Target team needed to find out how customers thought about third party sellers on a branded site and get a clear picture of what would work best for presenting key product information and images. Getting a better understanding of how shoppers judged listings, both on Target.com and on competitor sites, would provide valuable context the design teams needed on both the front end (what users see) and the back end (how to get sellers to create their listings). Because Target has a high customer brand perception to protect, this kind of research was critical for stakeholders making decisions about how to allocate effort and which direction to take future design development.

Project Objectives & Research Questions

The study objectives covered high-level expectations about third party sellers in relation to brand perceptions, detailed feedback about elements of third party product listings and the flows of shopping journeys:

• What are customer expectations around third party marketplace experiences for Target, and how do they compare for Walmart and Amazon?

• How does Target's post-order experience meet customer needs, including returns when a third party is involved?

• When customers browse the Target marketplace, are they aware of third party sellers?

• What info do they look for to make purchase decisions? How do they evaluate a product's quality from a listing?

• What are the delights and pain points of popular online shopping platforms?

Process

This is an example of a typical AnswerLab ad hoc study for a client that was ready to hit the ground running with a consultancy: ~1 month from kick off to report delivery, 24 individual in-depth interviews, 60 minutes each over Zoom.

Methodology & Session Details
During these 1:1 interview sessions, participants walked through a typical visit to an online shopping platform to capture their unfiltered feedback, then they were asked to shop for a specific example of a product and talk out loud as they clicked around. After this, they were directed to look at listings on Target.com and a competitor to elicit specific feedback about layout, information provided, and overall preferences. Running the sessions as semi-structured conversations along with specific tasks to observe provided ample space for participants to relax and open up, while still hitting key topics with consistency.

Participants & Logistics
As lead researcher, I advised on best practices for participant selection to ensure we got a good sample of online shoppers. In order to get feedback from the customers who made up the bulk of their site traffic, we knew we'd want to aim to talk to a wide demographic mix of folks who frequently shopped at Target online and had also recently used Walmart or Amazon. Once the Target team had approved the recruiting criteria, AnswerLab's operations handled participant selection and booking.