Gilt Mobile Checkout

Redesign checkout to be faster and globally inclusive

In 2011, "Gilt was one of the buzziest e-commerce startups in the world, with hundreds of millions in revenue and an IPO expected any quarter." For me, the opportunity was enormous: to collaborate with some of the highest caliber individuals at the time, while having positive impact on end users. Beyond redesigning checkout, I went deep on a multitude of projects in my years there, which included a new "live" experience while on the Excitement Team.

Summary

My role: Senior UX Architect

• Absorb business requirements.
• Research competitive experiences.
• Define flows and wireframes.
• Gather feedback and iterate.
• Present to stakeholders.
• Collaborate with visual design and engineering to implement.

Target: The data showed that 5.7% of Gilt visits were from international members. Even without integrated international shipping, the spend for customers outside the US was significant (~$14M run rate). The international customer's average order value was 30% higher than domestic shoppers ($165 vs $127).

Impact: Through focused design, the Gilt shopping experience improved for shoppers globally, and annual revenue increased by ~$67.5M.

Challenge

When I joined this project, the business case was already defined and Gilt was around 1,000 employees and several hundred million in annual revenue. My objective was to identify the areas that would need attention and define solutions for each area. Make the path to purchase even faster, and ensure it's inclusive for international shoppers.

Team

UX Architect (me), Product Manager, 2 Visual Designers (mobile/desktop), User Researcher, Engineering Lead, 3 Engineers. Some of their lovely faces:

Process

1) Analyze and empathize

There was a steep learning curve after business discovery was complete, so I leveraged my product partner and asked as many questions as possible to all stakeholders who would give me their ear during a lunch or coffee.

• Analyze vendor requirements - A 3rd-party vendor was identified that had specific capabilities, both technical and logistical. The vendor also had limitations including which types of items could ship to which countries, what the costs and times would be, and how rapidly and frequently this information could be retrieved through data calls. Part of my role was to consider all these factors and verify the feasibility of designs with engineers.
• Empathize with the shopper - It was easy to empathize with the domestic shopper on Gilt, because like all employees of the company, I was encouraged to shop with two compelling incentives: at cost prices and a generous allowance. E-commerce wasn't new and new flash-sales competitors were cropping up every month. Even Amazon was aiming to take a bite out of the space, so I spent time familiarizing myself with competitive experiences and used a small budget to purchase from other sites that already offered international shipping.
• Study form design - I rapidly read and referred to Luke Wroblewski's Web Form Design book.

2) Expose touch points

• The shopping user journey consisted of several steps before and after the specific "checkout" areas:

  1. Login
  2. Mosaic (landing page)
  3. Listing
  4. Detail
  5. Cart
  6. Payment
  7. Shipping
  8. Checkout summary
  9. Order confirmation: On-site
  10. Order confirmation: Email
  11. Order shipped: Email

• Other areas required consideration: transactional emails, packing slip, order history, returns history, international faq, help, and terms of service.

3) Explore, Define, Iterate

Over the course of a few months, I iterated on diagrams and mostly wireframes, presenting and revising with shoppers, other designers, engineers, and leadership. Pieces of the new system were being built on the backend and while the 3rd-party integrated with our system. The soft sketches hardened into "final" designs, and the new system and experience came to life. Once designs were set for the web app, I shifted over to the mobile team, and translated the work to iOS and Mobile Web, then continued to enhance filters for Mobile Web at Park and Bond. That was actually both exhausting and exhilarating. This team was even more lean and the best of the best.

Execution and Testing

Writing user stories in JIRA and post-implementation testing was less emphasized with my particular role. There were occasional questions, but once the final design decisions were cleared with our engineers, I was assigned to new projects and less involved as implementation was completed. Data scientists would flag any new feature rollout that negatively impacted conversion. Customer experience specialists would flag themes with any new issues from shoppers. No flags were thrown, which I took as a good sign.

Outcome

The Gilt shopping experience became available for shoppers globally, and annual revenue increased by an estimated $67.5M.

Beyond the benefit to the business, I personally gained a lot of confidence with this project due to the extensive cross-functional collaboration involved, and its status as a top-priority of the organization. Following this project, I was advanced to work with folks and initiatives of my choice. Before moving on from Gilt, I spent more time with the Mobile team and contributed significantly to the Women's business as a member of the Excitement team too. All of these were wonderful experiences.

Much of the Gilt staff has migrated over to Zola, "the wedding company that'll do anything for love." Kudos to you, Nobu.