USER EXPERIENCE CASE STUDY
Publix Customer Perks
Testing & Improvements
OVERVIEW
The Publix customer perk journey needed to be researched, tested, and improved upon.
Publix Super Markets is a grocery store chain in the Southeast United States that is best known for their helpful employees, clean locations, legendary fried chicken and loyal customers. When customers create online accounts, they receive personalized email communications with perks including money off an item of your choice and special perks on their birthday. During some user testing on other parts of the website, I noticed a pattern that our users weren't understanding what Publix perks even were, so I decided to investigate further and improve the entire experience.
ROLE & DETAILS
Lead Product Designer
User Testing, Wireframing, Prototyping, Documentation, Visual QA
Team
1 Product Designer, 1 Product Owner,
2 Engineers
Timeline
March 2021 – May 2021
Tools
Figma
THE CHALLENGE
"How can we improve the customer perk journey to be more educational and user-friendly for all of our customers"?
After conducting various user tests with account holders on Publix.com, I noticed a pattern that many users didn't understand what benefits come with their online account. With so many great perks available to our customers, I wanted to test and improve the experience to ensure all of our shoppers were getting all of the benefits out of their Club Publix membership.
USER TESTING
I tested the current experience to hear directly from our current shoppers.
On the User Testing platform, I tested 15 Publix account holders to gain more insights around the full perk experience. We asked customers to move through the flow of getting a perk email, viewing it on the website, and opening a modal to learn more. We asked our testers what was frustrating about the experience, if anything, and what they would do to improve the journey. Almost everyone suggested reducing redundancy in the experience and being more educational throughout the perks customer journey as a whole.
Some notable soundbites during user testing included:
• When asked about the efficacy of the wallet page: "Well, from what the previous page showed me, this is supposed to be like $3.00 off a specific item if you spend $50.00 or more. But that's not on this page. I don't get that from this page at all."
• We asked the user how they would redeem this perk, "That is a good question, because I was wondering that myself." This told us that we can further educate our users on how to redeem.
WIREFRAME ITERATION
It was important to not only educate the what, but the how.
To create a seamless redemption experience, I had to explain to the customer what the perks were, and the processes for how to redeem them, all on the same card. I grouped the headline of "Your Perk Is Here!" directly with the information on how to redeem it so they knew what they were looking at and how to use it. I then added more white space around the actual offer, increased the font, and added nice imagery to communicate the benefit of the perk.
ADDING ADDITIONAL CONTEXT
I wanted to use different scenarios to further educate our customers on the benefits of perks.
When a customer has a perk, the offer takes over the homepage hero placement – not great from a marketing standpoint. I wanted to design a way for the hero and perk to exist together, and use different scenarios to educate other customers. What if a customer wasn't enrolled in perks, or didn't have an online account? How could I educate them on opting in and signing up? I used this banner notification to do just that.
THE SOLUTION
Customers now have all the info they need all in one place.
Customers no longer need to open a modal to get the information they need about their perks. Instead, they now have an experience that tells them what their perk is and how to redeem it, all in one card. In the future, we’ll add the ability to add this perk to their shopping list so customers don’t forget about it. We'll also add empty states to the wallet, so that customers without perks know they exist and can easily enroll. With more perks rolling out over 2021, it was a pleasure to know I could make this experience better for our customers.
