FREELANCE WORK

After completing the User Experience Design Immersive course at General Assembly, I stayed in touch with one of the product designers at Drizly. One day I called my contact to talk about my job search and ask for any helpful hints. He told me that freelance work could be a good option to gain experience and continue improving my UX skills, so he gave me a design assignment.

Product Bundles for Drizly

The freelance project is to produce a design that allows Drizly to show product bundles on the Homepage, Browse, and PDP where users can add that product bundle to cart with one click. A product bundle could include anything from a set of wine, to a basket with add-ons/extras.

Drizly currently does not incorporate product bundles on their site or app. This was a great opportunity for me to use the information I gathered about Drizly users to create a new feature from scratch.

Research

I wanted to learn more about how companies use product bundling to their advantage. What I found is that bundling can be effective if there is monetary value.

Customer value perception refers to the value that the customer puts into the goods. Customers, in general, will favor products that they value. They will always go for the product that will seem “worth it.”
With this thinking, we should always create a bundle mix wherein all products are of value to the customer and also cheaper altogether than when they are bought individually.

*“Frequently Bought Together” feature on Amazon.com.*

I found that many companies use product bundling. You see it in fast food restaurants, TV and cable providers, video games, and on Amazon. I went to Amazon for my inspiration at first and tried to apply their idea of “frequently bought together” items.

*Banner ad at the top of the Sephora.com homepage.*

Another website I went to for inspiration is Sephora.com. Being a big fan of makeup and also saving money, I knew that they utilized product bundles. They had a banner ad on their homepage that advertised makeup minis. I was drawn to this design of this ad because I could advertise three product bundles instead of just one.

Initial Wireframes

After doing some research about product bundles, I wanted to get together some wireframes to show Drizly and see if I was on the right track. Although it wasn’t specified, I decided to design for the Drizly desktop site because I have already designed features for their mobile site and app. Below are the wireframes I sent to Drizly.

PRODUCT PAGE WIREFRAME

I would keep most of the product page the same, but then include a “Frequently Bought Together” section that would list complimentary items.
The button would add all of the items to the cart.
Perhaps I could add a little blurb that mentions how much money they would save by bundling the items together.

HOMEPAGE IDEA WITH PRODUCT BUNDLE PLACEMENT

Create a section on the homepage for the Product Bundles. The bundles could be called “sets” or “baskets” or something similar and it would include items that go together.
The category would be called something like “Bundle & Save” and it could be placed below “Trending Now” or closer to the top of the page.
Would show the amount the customer would save to entice them.
The NEW tag is a way to catch the users attention - This would probably be red with white text.
Once the user clicks on the bundle, it would bring them to a unique PDP that is similar to the one that exists, except it would have the bundle as one item, that way the user can purchase it with one click.

HOMEPAGE IDEA WITH BANNER AD

Create a banner ad for the product bundles.
I think that creating personalized “bundles” would be the best way to approach this. The ad would give three different bundle options and the button would lead to a unique PDP page for the bundle.
I would include images of the bundle items with shades of blue for the background and red buttons.

Feedback from the client

The sections need to be category based with no specific brand. The brand is based on what’s available at the liquor store. With this in mind, the category’s need to be more broad that I anticipated.
Original idea of “Frequently Bought Together” will not work because of the consumer data and alcohol availability at local stores. Drizly has collected data on what their users like to drink and it’s hard to find trends in what the user buys together. Everyone has different tastes when it comes to alcohol – something I discovered in user interviews.
Need to remember that each liquor store sells different brands. You can’t make the bundle based on a brand.
Likes the way the section is displayed on the homepage. Should use this idea as inspiration for the PDP.
Loves the banner ad idea, but design it for one bundle because they can’t link 3 CTAs.
Worst part – Drizly cannot legally discount the bundled packages. So there can be no incentive and even no discount.
Need to revisit the PDP page and where the bundle section should go. It can go anywhere and it can look different if that makes sense.

Back to the drawing board

My contact at Drizly had some great feedback. Now it was time to start thinking of ways to make product bundles less specific and with no monetary value. This was a challenge for me because all of my research said that product bundles should be based on value and saving money for the users. I had to change my approach and start thinking of the bundles as a quick and easy way to buy a lot of alcohol at one time.

Questions to think about:

What should the categories be?
How can we get the user to buy product bundles without incentives?
How can we include product bundles that are general and not brand-specific?
Should the bundles show up first on the homepage? Does this category appeal to the user more than the other categories?
What do these bundles look like visually? Do they follow the style guide or break the norm to stand out?

I think the biggest question is:

How can we get the user to buy product bundles without incentives?

Make it easy and straightforward
Create the appearance of a good deal
Place the bundles in an obvious location on the homepage
When searching for a product, make sure the user can see the related bundles and make them stand out visually
Personalize the bundles on the mobile app – if the user likes to buy wine, feature a “Napa Valley Wines” bundle

SKETCHING

I wanted to sketch out some wireframe ideas of how to solve this problem.

USER FLOW

Once I had an idea of what I was going to make, I decided to finalize a user flow. The flow I came up with would be if the user wanted to add a specific bundle to their shopping cart. I wanted to product bundle to be easy to find and easily understood. I also wanted the user to be able to swap out the alcohol brand without being led down a different path. I would do this by adding a link that would bring the user to the general alcohol brand page and then once the brand of choice is selected, the user would be taken right back to the product bundle page and the swap would be reflected there.

High Fidelity Mock ups

After testing the user flow, it was time to start designing. My first task was to add the bundles to the homepage. I wanted to feature a few bundles on the homepage because people would be more likely to find them there. I suggested adding the bundles to the navigation as well. I would place it within the EXPLORE category.