Concept Testing

The Problem

Jane.com was unsure if adding a guest checkout feature would reduce customer retention and marketing effectiveness. Until this project, customers were required to register for a Jane account to make a purchase.

I was tasked with exploring why online shoppers might prefer a guest checkout option instead of being forced to register for a site account, understand and illustrate an ideal guest checkout experience, and test early design prototypes before they were launched as site experiments or a live feature update. 

Process

• Four target demographic exploratory surveys (~1200 respondents)

• Five remote moderated customer usability tests testing three prototypes

• One target demographic exploratory survey confirming information found in user tests (~400 respondents)

Findings

We discovered several key reasons why consumers preferred to checkout as a guest instead of registering for a site account:

• To avoid marketing communications

• They were uncertain they would shop on the site again

• They had simply forgotten their account login credentials

After this study, I proposed the best-received guest checkout flow designs to be included in experimentation and later a live release.

Results

After controlled experiments proved that a guest checkout feature would substantially increase gross revenue, it was launched in 2020. Cart abandonment rates decreased, and with the addition of a post-purchase upsell messaging we were able to convert additional guest customers into registered users. 

My Role

I wrote and analyzed customer surveys, lead the moderated user tests, and presented findings and recommendations to product and senior leadership teams.