Cart Redesign
Summary
We believed that by building a cart that allows buyers to easily evaluate items, buyers would more quickly and effectively find the item they love and make a purchase. In order to effectively evaluate and compare items in the cart, users need essential product details to be clearly presented. Buyers won’t need to leave the cart, perform multiple clicks, or scroll continuously to find the info they need.
This redesign focused on a complete redesign of the Cart UX with this hypothesis in mind, which realized a win of $5.8 million and a 2% increase in conversion. Additionally, we extended these changes to the international market, which resulted in a $6.0 million win and a lift in both conversion (+3.0%) and average converting browser value (+2.6%).
Company
Etsy
Date
June-Sept. 2023
My role
UX/UI Prototyping Strategy + Vision Work Research
The challenge
Because the research and analytics told us… Android users are using the Cart as a collection surface and springboard for item-to-item comparison, and that Android buyers visit the cart almost 2x more per visit than iOS buyers
We believed that… giving buyers the information and tools they need to accurately evaluate the listing in their cart
Would result in… buyers finding and buying the right items for them more quickly and easily.
We partnered with research to interview buyers to expand our understanding of how buyers use Cart to compare items on Android, determine the most common use cases, and unlock buyer needs for this surface. We learned that buyers…
- Value being able to closely examine product images
- Would like to reference reviews
- Prefer seeing shipping details and total price in the cart
- Often use “Saved for later," but these items often are forgotten
- Appreciate an extra nudge of confidence as they narrow down products
I utilized these insights, competitive analysis, and UX best practices to shape the vision for the Cart moving forward.
Solution
For phase one, we completed a modernization of the Cart, which included deprecating the use of SDL to create a more flexible, maintainable native architecture. These updates would dramatically decrease the tech effort spent for each experiment and would allow us to be nimble and iterate quickly. Next, we made UX improvements, with the following themes in mind:
- Optimize info presentation / eliminate friction:
We believe by empowering buyers with the right set of information, in the most effective hierarchy, they’ll more effectively be able to make a buying decision. - Help buyers prioritize items in the cart:
We believe that by giving buyers the tools to prioritize which items they want (or don’t want), they’ll be able to assess relative value and narrow down items they’re actively considering purchasing. - Increase buyer confidence + trust:
We know from research that buyers benefit from confidence/trust signals as an ‘extra nudge’ for them to commit to narrowing down and making a purchasing decision. - Help buyers compare across cart and related surfaces:
We believe that by optimizing add-to-cart moments and ingresses to cart, buyers will navigate more challenging comparison scenarios and diagnose differences between items much more easily. In addition, the task of “narrowing down” or “comparing” items in the cart will stay top of mind for buyers, even when they’ve navigated away from the cart experience.
Results
The US Cart redesign was a notable win of $5.8M annualized GMS (Gross Merchandise Sales)
Multiple changes were made, including: more prominent single shop checkout buttons, which increased the rate of single shop checkout by 600% (from 1.7% to 12.1%), more prominent item removal buttons, as well as more readable listing cards, which all helped make the Android cart more shoppable, and drove a 4.5% increase in checkout starts and a 2% increase in conversion.
The international cart redesign realized a win of $6.0M GMS
We applied the US Cart updates for international users, while respecting stricter regulations and UX requirements. We measured a decrease in listing views (-0.6%), most likely because the new cart made information clearer. We also saw a +2.7% lift to checkout starts, leading to an increase in both conversion (+3.0%) and ACBV (average converting browser value; +2.6%), driven largely by increased cart sizes, not item price.
Next steps
We continue to iterate on the cart, including experimentation with:
- Trust signals (ie: seller rating)
- Swipeable actions
- Collapsible cards
- Compare mode
- Share functionality
- Coupons + deals
- Empty cart recommendations
- Edit mode
- ...and more