In my role as a Senior Product Designer I simplified the discounting structure and promotion management workflows through collaborative design iteration, review of competitive research and validating prototypes with users.
The redesign led to favorable user testing results with participants scoring 91% average task completion rates and 83% average NPS score.
My Role: UX Lead
Team: Product Manager, 2 Engineers
Users: SMB, Mid-Market, Enterprise Merchants
Activities Performed: Competitor Analysis • UX Audit • Customer Workshops • Surveys • Information Architecture • Workflow Diagrams • Wireframes • High Fidelity Prototypes • Usability Tests
Project Duration: 3 months
How can we simplify the management of discounting structures and improve the experience of creating and editing promotions?
The current-state user experience for creating discounts was restrictive and cumbersome often composed of long-sentence formats that were not scalable. The information architecture did not provide a consolidated experience so users would need to visit several other locations in the control panel to view and manage discounts. The discount rules available were limited and lacked features compared to mid-market competitors. Merchants were unable to efficiently run and manage their catalog sales as there was no ability to schedule sales or view a complete list of products on sale.
In the design of Promotion Manager, I began by immersing myself in discounting. I reviewed competitors, performed an audit of our existing application and engaged with customers to see how they go about discounting tasks. This helped to identify the following gaps:
Lack of Features Compared to Competitors - The existing set of discount rules were limited to a few options and didn’t allow for the flexibility to make a variety of combinations. For instance, the only way to create a shipping restriction would be if it were a coupon. Often users would be frustrated by the inability to set a start and end date on a sale price, so they were using discounts for that purpose. We needed to match competitors’ out-of-the-box options, while including new promotions features that will differentiate BigCommerce from the pack.
Refactor and Consolidate the Information Architecture - The experience of creating a discount and a sale were not consolidated. A user could create promotions in at least three different areas of the product. By consolidating all discounting capability within one area of the Control Panel, users aren’t forced to ping-pong across the app or be confused about where to begin defining promotions.
Current-state UX is Restrictive, Cumbersome - The current UI didn’t scale well to accommodate the creation of new rules and was composed of these awkward interactions and long, cumbersome sentence structures. Updating the UI would support SMB and mid-markets with the goal of efficiently and easy rule construction with language they are familiar with and terminology/copy that is clear and comprehensive.
I explored various structures for consolidating the promotions and developing flexible discount rule creation workflow that accounted for all the gaps in our current offering. Once all the workflows were captured, I began to translate them into UI, relying on micro-interactions as needed.
Promotion Manager offers a central hub for the creation and management of discounts and catalog sales pricing with improved user experience and a more robust library of discount rules. With the new, consolidated discounting structure, users would no longer need to bounce back and forth across the app to apply discounts. Rule creation is revisioned to be straightforward and flexible with the ability to set limitations, create coupon codes and allow for the creation of draft discounts. Promotion Manager also features a Catalog Sales section which allows users to manage a list of their current and pending products on sale, and add new sales. Finally, the Promotion Calendar provides a way for the user to track promotions.