Bother: Improving Product Discoverability

Problem area(S)

Discoverability · Navigation

Behavioural Insights used

Progressive Disclosure: Revealed subcategories only when needed to reduce overwhelm.


Salience:
Added a persistent category menu button on mobile so users could easily find and switch categories.


Information Scent: Clear labels and structure helped people discover what was on offer.

Special Thanks To

Lorin Minxhozi
Senior Product Manager


Jade Vincent

Buying Manager


Yalda Yazdanian
Buyer


Henriette Brand
Senior Mobile Engineer


Connor Stocks
Senior Full Stack Engineer

Problem

Despite the large product range, customers struggled to find the products they were looking for — leading to frustration and missed conversions.

Solution

I designed an intuitive horizontal mega-menu for desktop and added easy access points throughout the site to an improved side-nav on mobile — improving category and product discoverability.

Results

Survey score of users who “strongly agree” they could find what they needed rose from 29% to 37%, and site-wide conversion improved from 0.86% to 2.4%.

After a survey with customers, and a design audit—

—It was clear that the issue on desktop lay with having a category grid as an entry point.

The grid sent customers from a top line category (i.e. Laundry) right into a long list of products. For customers looking for specific products this was counter-productive and overwhelming.

Plus, the side-bar nav was inconsistent across category pages, making repeat use difficult.

Mobile's sub-category nav was even trickier to navigate as it required horizontal scrolling.

I collaborated closely with 2 engineers (mobile and desktop) and hosted solution sessions to generate ideas.

We quickly reduced our 30+ ideas into 3 strong design directions.

We then noted the riskiest assumptions around them (e.g. Does the layout feel familiar? Is it overwhelming?)—

And kept them top of mind as we then conducted usability tests for each direction.

The mega-menu variant ultimately proved to be the best direction, but as it showcased a still overwhelming amount of categories—

I directly involved the commercial team in order to help redesign and simplify the category architecture.

This gave us a workable amount of high-level menu options, categories, and sub-categories.

I then crafted a finalised design for desktop, after usability-testing a prototype to inform refinements.

I also improved the mobile's side-nav with:

  1. Icons for the main categories

  2. Dropdown interactions for sub-sub-cateogries

  3. Labelling for back arrow destinations

Watch a video of me presenting the mobile improvements for devs here 👇

I also made a point to make this side-nav easily discoverable and accessible across the entire site—

From a entry point on the homepage, to a persisting button across category pages.

After mapping out use cases and crafting components for the design system, we launched the improvements to engagement from 20% of all users

And survey score of users who “strongly agree” they could find what they needed rose from 29% to 37%, whilst site-wide conversion improved from 0.86% to 2.4%.

Justin gets really engaged with all parts of business - trying to understand every challenge and constraint, and builds really strong relationships with the likes of marketing and commercial in the process.

Lorin Minxhozi

Product Lead, Not On The High Street

You

Let’s work together!

I’m currently looking for an exciting full-time, remote opportunity.

Email

justincampbellplatt@gmail.com

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linkedin.com/in/justincampbellp/

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