Petsmart Case Study
Project Overview
Early 2017, I met with the Senior Vice President, Digital of Petsmart and presented opportunities for UX improvements.
Petsmart is king at magnetizing it's customer through branding. The emotional connection is apparent not only in the language Petsmart uses onsite, but through the beautiful imagery and content it provides to it’s users.
Through improved User Experience and overall site cleanup, Petsmart can solidify it's user and business goals even tighter.
Research
The first thing I did was review the site's overall architecture to see what was working, what wasn't and what could be reworked. I quickly wrote out what I considered to be primary and secondary callouts on the site: primary being the quickest revenue wins, and the secondary being the wins that takes more commitment from the user.
Considering that Petsmart also had hundreds of stores nationwide- I did not want to downplay the revenue potential of their animal services, however- I believe showcasing user product purchase needs first would be the winning solution for a higher user engagement.
User goals:
Easy shopping experience with minimal friction, so user can purchase for their furry family member
Relying on Petsmart as the expert for all their pet needs
Business goals:
Increased revenue through forward eccomerce strategy
Better overall user experience
Quick/low cost improvements
After conducting a quick overview of the site, I found many quick fixes that would significantly improve sales and the overall user experience.
Reducing image sizes to drive ecommerce sales through call to actions
Make the most important thing (products/ call to actions) on the screen the focal point
User friendly navigation- Don’t let the design of the site hinder the site’s readability
Images have size standards/and cohesive image quality
Better use of white space
Nice to Haves
Personalization: If there is one thing we know about Petsmart, we know that their customers treat their furry friends like family. Why not personalize towards their pet in process?
If a user has purchased their animals favorite canned food, and there was 24 in a package, then target the user to purchase the food again in 12 days. Assuming our frequenting users have personal account, there's no reason why we couldn't.
“This type of user-specific messaging based on profile attributes has proven wildly successful, yielding 3x greater click-through rates in 24 hours
than their counterparts.”
Localization: This is another nice-to-have that would provide ease of use to the user and could push additional revenue as well.
If colder weather is coming to town we can showcase warm winter clothing for your furry friend. Spring ramping up? Make sure to get your pet flea and tick ready before the flowers start blooming.
Large Imagery and Slow load times
When I conducted this research, it was apparent that branding took precedence over user experience. Images were large, slow to load, and left the user in a void of pretty images with no site direction. I ran a speed perfomance test from both Google and Pingdom to only have them confirm my imagery concerns.
My Suggestions:
Reduced image sizes/ clean up CSS/ Javascript for faster load times:
“According to surveys done by Akamai and Gomez.com, nearly half of web users expect a site to load in 2 seconds or less, and they tend to abandon a site that isn’t loaded within 3 seconds...The end result – lots of potential sales down the drain because of a few seconds difference”
Google Page Speed Insights Jan 2017
Petsmart Speed Performance Test Jan 2017
Conclusion
Reducing image sizes will not only save users time, but will minimize page drop offs. This paired with user friendly navigation will be a win-win scenario for Petsmart moving forward.
Make products the most prominent focal point, not imagery of animals
User friendly navigation- Don’t let the design of the site hinder the site’s readability
Images have size standards/and cohesive image quality
Segmented /organized content to prevent infinite scrolling
Smaller Images that take up less real estate