Case Study:
Waiting Room

Role

Senior Product Designer (Lead)

Team

SVP Digital, UX Director, Product Manager, Backend Eng, Frontend Eng, Myself

Timeline

~2 weeks

Category

Category

E-comm

Problem

Bath & Body Works’ site suffers severe traffic on Candle Day. They sell more candles in a single day than they do in a typical month. It is the most trafficked Salesforce site on that given day. Bath & Body Works wanted a way to improve site performance to provide a better shopping experience on Candle Day.

Success Criteria

  • Increase in loyalty sign ups.

  • Increase in site performance.

  • Increase conversion rate.

  • Decrease item cancelations.

  • Decrease customer care calls.

Solution

Video displaying the waiting room in action.

Why it Works

💕 Loyalty Landing

The early access phase of Candle Day was a loyalty member exclusive event. This incentivized enrollments and reward redemptions. Loyalty members could shop immediately after the waiting room. Guest users were redirected to either sign-in or enroll.

🧘‍♂️ Removal of Stressors

  • Orients customer quickly, instills trust and provides brand familiarity.

    Removes uncertainty, and anxiety. Displays individualized wait information.

  • Addressing any anxieties upfront removes unnecessary stressors, and provides a smoother experience.

  • The progress bar shows a beginning and an end, and waiting is reframed as progress.

  • By providing an expected time to shop, uncertainty and ambiguity is removed.

👩‍💻 Occupied Time

  • Product list for customers to scan.

  • Alt email notification option.

  • Unoccupied time feels longer than occupied time.

  • We previewed product to help pass the time, and build excitement.

  • Customers could also be notified by email when it was their turn in line, freeing them up to do other things while they waited.

🧠 Rewards of the Tribe

  • Wait information influences customers to wait in line, so they can join in shopping the sale.

  • Humans are very influenced by what others think and do.

  • Our brains are adapted to seek rewards that make us feel included.

  • By providing wait time information, visitors knew what they were waiting for was also valuable to others.

🚦 Throttled traffic

Bath & Body Works throttled the flow of traffic to the site in order to optimize site performance and customer wait time. Load tests were performed prior to the event to understand what the site could handle.

Impact

Performance of early access hours.

Hourly conversion increased by ~30% to LY.

Hourly traffic velocity decreased by ~50% to LY.

Loyalty enrollment increased 8x to LY.

For confidentiality reasons I have omitted the actual values for these metrics.

Approach

  • We conducted 25 moderated interviews and ~300 online surveys to learn BBW customer waiting room pain points, expectations, and common task flows to test against assumptions and make informed design decisions.

  • We also interviewed internal employees to look for executional efficiency gains.

  • After gathering pain points, task flows, business constraints, and design scope we mapped the user journeys and core features. Sticking to primary flows helped to set the stage and align other cross-functional teammates.

  • We conducted 25 moderated interviews and ~300 online surveys to learn BBW customer waiting room pain points, expectations, and common task flows to test against assumptions and make informed design decisions.

  • I also interviewed internal employees to look for executional efficiency gains.

  • After gathering pain points, task flows, business constraints, and design scope we mapped the user journeys and core features. Sticking to primary flows helped to set the stage and align other cross-functional teammates.

Empathy maps, customer journeys, & task flows.

Empathy maps, customer journeys, & task flows.

Empathy maps, customer journeys, & task flows.

Empathy maps, customer journeys, & task flows.

Identifying & defining internal efficiency problems.

Identifying & defining internal efficiency problems.

Identifying & defining internal efficiency problems.

Identifying & defining internal efficiency problems.

Primary user flows.

Primary user flows.

Primary user flows.

Primary user flows.

Detailed user flows.

Detailed user flows.

Detailed user flows.

Detailed user flows.

Channel flows.

Channel flows.

Channel flows.

Channel flows.

Designs

Comprehensive, but not Complicated

Progress Bar Steps

Pre & Post Queue

Error States

Deliverables

Handoff specifications include anatomy, instances, content guidelines, behavior, interactions, and logic. Reach out to Nathan to see full handoff files.

Let’s Connect

loosnathan@gmail.com

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