Out of stock products are a dead end for customers. This project sought to give users the ability to learn with items come back in stock, and even pre-order products. An extension of this functionality was shown to illustrate the opportunity to sell local designer fashion on consignment.
Client : Macys.com
Tools : Photoshop, Sketch
Role : Senior User Experience Designer
A combination of customer satisfaction survey feedback and site log analysis revealed that we were losing business because inventory availability was inaccurate. Users often didn’t find out an item was unavailable until checkout.
By surfacing availability on the product page, we set customer expectations and provided us an opportunity to capture a sale that we would otherwise lose. Millions of dollars were being left on the table.
First I wanted to understand why this was a problem. Was it technical, design, overlooked, or even political?
So I talked to the engineering team to find out how much work it would take to accurately show product inventory on the product pages. It turns out it wasn’t easy, but another team on another floor had inventory accuracy in their backlog. I went forward anyway, knowing that if this happened it might be a year or more before implementation.
Next, I did competitive and comparative research on how retailers were handling inventory notifications. After collecting a couple dozen screenshots that stood out, I printed them out and annotated what worked and what didn’t. Then they became wallpaper in my cubicle.
I knew my final deliverable would be used to sell the idea, rather than explain flows and functionality. So, I made some screen captures of our site and quickly hacked them apart in Photoshop.
I worked through use cases sequentially as I iterated on solutions. The same infrastructure that would allow “out of stock” purchases, could be used for pre-sales and even a kind of consignment pop-up.
One solution was to leave the add to bag button in place and capture the sale. This could be problematic for credit card authorization. If the item remained out of stock too long, reauthorization would be needed.
This approach is dependent on backend work done to the inventory system by another team. So it was recommended for later execution.
Another approach was to capture the intent of the purchase and message the customer when stock arrived. This was convenient for logged in users and captured emails from new users.
This solution could be executed prior to completion of inventory infrastructure work. While it would be missing an estimate for re-stocking, that could come later.
Looking forward, I wanted to explore other uses for the inventory system work so we could get even bigger return on the work.
Pre-ordering would help the business control our inventory flow, get sales prior to receipt of goods, and gauge customer interest in new products. We could also enhance loyalty programs with exclusive offers.
Even further down the road, the inventory functionality could be used to facilitate consignment sales. Hot trends could be quickly sold in digital pop-ups. Smaller, local clothing designers could be presented to customers. Fashion trends could be tested and established.
An Invision project and PDF of the click-though prototype were socialized to leadership, along with screenshots for presentations. I made it a point to attend the showcases of the team working on inventory accuracy. The functionality required an advocate to campaign for resources. Unfortunately, I left the company before I could be that evangelist.