BevMo is a national retail chain focused on the sale of alcoholic beverages (and more). With the deprecation of its existing web platform and management software, BevMo.com needed a new site to sell its thousands of SKUs. In less than six months, in collaboration with cross-functional teams, we built and launched the MVP of BevMo’s new site. As the lead designer on the project, I was responsible for the end-to-end experience of the website, as well as the app. I collaborated with our UX research team to define user flows and use cases, built a design system from scratch, and met weekly with stakeholders to ensure alignment with business goals. I also established best practices for task management, creating a sturdier foundation that continued to improve as the project progressed.
How might we improve the alcohol buying experience for existing and future BevMo customers?
Because we were deprecating the existing BevMo site, we wanted to make sure we didn’t lose our existing customer base, but instead enhanced the experience they were familiar with.
BevMo has hundreds of thousands of customers and 166 retail locations across the United States. From online shopping to picking up in store to shipping, every BevMo customer has unique needs. In order to better understand our customers needs, we surveyed 100 users to discover how they shop for alcohol.
Customers were asked by what method they were most likely to shop for alcohol online, resulting in four distinct categories:
1. by what they’ve liked in the past
2. by occasion
3. by spend
4. by what’s trending
We then asked them to rank these categories. Spend by far outweighed the remaining three at 42%. It was followed by occasion, previous favorites, and trending products.
Customers were also asked which of eight potential resources they would find helpful for alcohol purchasing, and to rank via an interest scale (a scale ranging from 0–100) how appealing each resource is to them. Generally, customers were most interested in resources that can enhance their alcohol consumption, such as cocktail recipes and food pairings.
I spent time analyzing data from the existing BevMo site to identify areas for improvement and opportunities for optimization. I found a lot of drop off points that contributed to bounce rate and low user engagement.
Based on user research, customers indicated that price, occasion, favor, and trend were their four main shopping routes, so we focused on homepage conversion.
I redesigned the homepage to feature curated product recommendations, seasonal promotions, and personalized content based on user preferences and browsing history.
I also implemented intuitive navigation elements, like visual categories, and prominent call-to-action buttons to guide users toward relevant product categories and special offers.
I explored several routes to encourage homepage browsing and add to cart rates. One version blew up featured products and provided a focused browsing experience. This was later ruled out by user feedback, as it limited product quantity.
Our customers are very price-conscious, so I spent time crafting collection page filters to streamline the browsing experience.
I updated collection filters to provide users with granular control over product search results and introduced advanced filtering options such as varietal, region, price, and occasion to facilitate targeted product discovery.
I originally explored different filtering UX, including a fixed horizontal bar and filter drawer that would allow for an additional product per row. However, user testing revealed customers wanted to see dynamic filtering and didn’t mind the loss of one column.
I like when I can see the products change by what I’ve selected. It lets me know something is happening and it’s working as intended.
A product detail page (PDP) is the lowest level of each product, but I didn’t want it to be an afterthought. In fact, our research indicated that users tend to navigate to related products from a PDP, and thus I provided numerous jumping off points.
Oftentimes I’ll click on a bottle of wine that I like the look of, but then see it doesn’t have that many reviews or incentives, so I’ll look for related bottles by varietal or region.
The existing BevMo site was lacking any concrete branding and visual direction, so I took the initiative to develop a design system in an effort to maintain visual consistency, streamline development workflows, and expedite the creation of new features and modules.
I established design guidelines, component libraries, and reusable UI patterns to empower cross functional teams and ensure scalability as the platform evolves.
I worked to ensure a seamless and responsive user experience across desktop, mobile, and tablet breakpoints. I also prioritized mobile optimization to cater to the growing segment of mobile shoppers and improve accessibility on-the-go.
By implementing these solutions we discovered a 25% increased homepage conversion rate, indicating improved engagement and propensity to purchase. The introduction of new collection page filters led to higher user engagement levels, and our new PDP was linked to a 15% decrease in bounce rate.
Building upon the success of the MVP, we plan to continue iterating and optimizing on the site. We’re exploring opportunities to enhance the personalization capabilities of the platform by leveraging customer data, analytics, and machine learning to deliver more personalized shopping experiences. We also plan to incorporate social elements such as customer reviews, ratings, and user-generated content to build trust, credibility and social validation, encouraging conversation and fostering community engagement.