Gardyn shopping experience
Modernizing the in-app shopping experience to anticipate and satisfy our users' every need.
Context: Gardyn is an indoor hydroponic system that uses AI monitoring to help people grow plants at home.
TLDR
As lead designer, I modernized and simplified Gardyn's shopping experience by incorporating industry standards and adding key features like search and filters, while also streamlining the checkout process. When we launched we saw an increase of average ticket price by 11% and mitigated the expected 15% drop in sales due to seasonal fluctuations.
The Gardyn shopping experience was bad.
Why is this a problem? It was the main point of sale for plants for Gardyners, and the shop wasn't profitable for the company. Profitability was at risk because users didn't know what they were buying and how to find what they were looking for quickly and easily. I ran a competitive audit of our shop experience to understand what we were missing and how we could improve the experience.
Our starting point
We didn't have to reinvent the wheel; using established patterns was the way to go.
After the audit, we pinpointed high-impact areas for improvement. Then, we prioritized key features that we thought would give us the most bang for our buck.
Features
Search functionality with filtering capabilities and tags.
Improved organization: grouping types of plants into collections
Opportunities to promote specific products on the home screen
Quick add-to-cart functionality
Developed a new page structure to include product descriptions.
An improved and simplified checkout experience
Search, sort, discover and enjoy.
We wanted to make sure that searching for stuff was super easy, making sure people could find what they wanted to buy, discover cool new plant varieties, and keep it all smooth throughout the shopping journey.
Beyond a one scroll
Users struggled finding products on the home screen because it took a long time to scroll through the lengthy and uncategorized list of plants.
To help users find what they want and to discover new plant varieties we grouped plants into collections. We also introduced a "Hero" section with featured items to help the business highlight specific products.
Just keep adding plants…
When users are in a discovery mindset, our goal is not to disrupt their flow by immediately redirecting them to the checkout. Instead, we want to encourage them to continue exploring the store. The previous feature tackled the 'add to cart' function, but it needed refinements. When redesigning, we prioritized simplification, leveraging icons and interactive inputs. One of the key challenges we addressed was making it work seamlessly within the constraint of the limited space available on the product thumbnails.
Default state of adding to cart
Active state of adding to cart
Plants added to cart
Informed customers are loyal customers
We created PDPs that included important information about each plant's characteristics, care requirements, and pricing details.
Catering to a diverse audience of gardeners with varying needs, we also introduced tags like 'beginner' and 'plant type' for categorization and at-a-glance insights. These additions helped empower users to make informed purchase decisions, leading to higher user satisfaction and increased conversion rates.
Making it work for all customers
Gardyn's shop posed an interesting challenge in that users have the option to use a combination of credits and dollars for their plant purchases. Members receive credits as part of their membership, while non-members make purchases using dollars. To solve this we needed to visually distinguish membership states and customize each shopping experience based on the user type. This impacted how pricing is displayed on nearly every screen, changes to iconography, and the incorporation of new upselling techniques to enhance membership conversions for non-members who are shopping.
The final touch: Order complete
By providing clear cost breakdowns, and showing membership savings we simplified the complexity of the previous checkout process. This helped customers feel confident and informed about their purchase decisions. We also strategically incorporated membership upsells, which gave the business a win and lead to a significant uptick in conversions.
Results
Following our shop's launch, we observed a significant increase of 11% in average ticket price, jumping from $54.89 to $60.93. In addition, the new shop mitigated the expected 15% drop in sales due to seasonal fluctuation, and lead to an 8% increase in membership conversions.