Saved Items, Login and Registration

I led product design from the New Look side for login, registration, and saved items improvements during a native app re-platforming programme.

Three saved items concept views for the New Look native app.

The outcome

Delivering login and saved item improvements reduced customer service calls and negative app store reviews, but did not meaningfully move the needle for other business metrics. Once we delivered improvements to the bag and checkout experience, revenue, conversion rate, and monthly active users improved and surpassed mobile web benchmarks.

Context and goals

During a re-platforming programme at New Look, we released iOS and Android apps without the ability for users to sign in to their account, and with limited scope and available APIs.

The apps were underperforming against mobile web on conversion rate and revenue. App store ratings were around 2.3 stars, which was damaging the brand.

User problem

Learnings from app store reviews and customer service turned our assumptions about the most pressing issues into high-priority improvement ideas:

users expected to sign in so they could keep bags and saved details across devices
highly engaged customers used saved items throughout their decision-making and buying journey

Key business objectives

improve app store ratings
increase monthly active users
get conversion rate and average order value to parity with mobile web

My contribution and responsibilities

I led product design from the New Look side and partnered with two agency designers. I worked with a product manager, tech lead, app developers, business analyst, and a separate API development team.

Understanding user needs

We used interviews in New Look stores to understand which retailers' apps customers used, why they installed and used an app, and whether any feature stood out as important for them.

Competitor analysis helped us understand first-time usage of shopping apps and identify common industry patterns that users would experience elsewhere.

Preliminary research for New Look app login, registration, and saved items. — Preliminary app research, interviews, and competitor analysis.

Research recommendations

let users browse content before asking them to log in or register
ensure front-loaded login and registration can be skipped
communicate the value of push notifications before prompting users to enable them at system level

User flows and wireframing

To kick off design, we ran workshops to hash out high-level details of how login, registration, and saved items could work.

There was pressure from business stakeholders to force users to sign in because signed-in users are more valuable and could receive a personalised experience. I created two tappable wireframes to get user feedback on different registration flows: one with front-loaded registration and onboarding, and another where the user could browse products without being prompted to sign in.

Users responded better to the version where they could browse products without signing in, but they still saw the value of logging in. Based on these learnings and the business value of signed-in users, we chose an onboarding process that could be easily skipped.

Login and saved items workshop material for the New Look app. — Workshop material used to explore login, registration, and saved items flows.

Vision for saved items

Stages in a customer journey can be represented by a few simple steps: aware, inspire, consider, decide, and purchase.

As users go through this journey, their needs change from a quick overview of the product range and fewer product details to more product details and less overview of the range. With saved items, our goal was to smooth the transition between these steps and provide a way to browse a large selection of products while keeping track of items that grabbed attention.

We tried to cater for:

reducing pogo-sticking between inspiration, consideration, decision, and the product overview
interruption, because short attention spans and frequent interruption on mobile mean users are unlikely to complete a purchase in one go
small steps to conversion, because adding to saved items is a smaller emotional commitment than adding to bag

Diagram showing saved items within the customer journey. — Illustrating changing needs at different stages of the customer journey.

Concept design

Working with UI designers Jenara Baldoni and Sean O'Donovan, we created three different views for saved items:

editorial view, to bring alternative product images forward from the product page and give more room to the product image
list view, as a compact and conventional saved items view
grid view, as a visual way to provide a quick overview of saved items

Editorial, list, and grid views for saved items. — Three saved items concepts: editorial, list, and grid views.

Prototype and usability testing

As the UI design started to come along, I worked on a high-fidelity prototype to validate usability with users and understand feasibility and development effort.

I partnered with a user researcher to conduct usability tests with New Look users in store and used the prototype for design walkthroughs and sprint planning.

Origami prototype for saved items usability testing. — Origami prototype used for usability testing.

Saved items prototype demo used for usability testing and walkthroughs.

Quick report from in-store guerrilla testing.

Define solution and sprint planning

I helped the product manager, tech lead, and developers clarify user stories and acceptance criteria. During delivery, I worked with the UAT and engineering team, helped with testing, and raised UI and UX bugs.