Project

Create a package tracking page that clearly conveys the stages of the delivery process for large items but maintains enough flexibility to account for standard small parcel shipments as well

Highlights

• Developing a project plan to align stakeholders around a conversation-led approach
• Proposing a more consistent alert treatment based on urgency
• Using quantitative (click tracking), qualitative (usability testing and card sorting), and competitive data to inform a solution
• Creating a new form of copy documentation to help the engineering team streamline their implementation
• Adapting our designs for app based on the user type and best practices

A DEEPER DIVE

Background

Large items like sofas or appliances ship via freight, which is often an atypical experience for customers used to shopping online. Because of the complexities involved with shipping a large item, Wayfair has a significantly higher contact rate for these orders. Our task was to redesign the package tracking page to clearly convey what stage of the delivery process an item was in and ensure the user had the information they needed about what would happen next. The page also needed to be flexible enough to handle standard small parcel shipments that would arrive via carriers like FedEx or UPS.

Role: Content Strategist

Skills & Deliverables

• Competitive Analysis
• User Research
• Content Wireframes
• Conversation Workshopping
• Variable Content Document

Process

I took a conversation-first approach to the redesign by leading a workshop designed to strip away digital elements and explore the conversation the page has with the user. I then conducted a competitive analysis to identify hierarchical trends amongst tracking pages. Leveraging all of this work as well as existing qualitative data, I crafted a set of content wireframes. My design partner used those wireframes to begin building high-fidelity mocks, and we collaborated closely to create a solution we believed was easy to navigate and best met our user’s needs at each stage of the shipping process. To test this, we then conducted a remote usability study, from which we identified opportunities for improvement. After further iteration to integrate our findings, we had final mocks and copy ready for development.

Time to pivot!

As we neared the end of our first iteration, our team underwent a re-org, which resulted in us losing our engineering resources needed to move forward with this project. This was a setback, but we didn’t want our work to stop here. At this point, we’d spent a lot of time on the redesign and had learned a lot of valuable lessons about our users and their goals. So I proposed a pivot.

I approached our product manager to discuss options for low-lift changes that might utilize some of the work we’d already done. One of the biggest things we had learned was that our existing messaging wasn’t answering the questions customers were asking. It was too operationally focused, talking about things like our delivery network, when what customers really wanted to know was when their item was arriving. This is a difficult user need to fulfill because we actually can’t give them this date right away—we just don’t have that information. So I hypothesized that if we couldn’t get them the date, the next best thing we could do would be to tell them when we could get them the delivery date.

In partnership with the PM, I developed a test focused entirely on copy changes. We ended up focusing in on our transactional emails, as these were relatively easy to change with minimal engineering effort. I rewrote the emails to be more customer-focused, and we made minor updates to order and tracking pages on site to ensure a cohesive experience and clean test results.

Results

The primary KPI for this project was contacts per order (CPO), and our analysis showed a decrease of 17%—equivalent to approximately $1.5 million in annual savings. All because of better content! The success of these changes in addition to all of our earlier research allowed us to continue advocating for a more comprehensive redesign of the package tracking page.