John Lewis Partnership
Wishlists and save
John Lewis's wishlists had evolved organically over many years, and the partnership wanted to explore the potential of evolving it further with the inclusion of:
Making wishlists collaborative
Add to wishlists, whilst signed out
‘Save for Later’ within Basket
I worked on introducing all of these new features, but also proactively looked for other opportunities to improve the save/wishlist experience for John Lewis’s online customers.
My role
I was the sole UX designer for the team and worked with:
Project Manager
User Interface (UI) Designer
A UX Researcher as and when requested
Developers
I led multiple stages of the process including:
Heuristic analysis of existing journeys
Competitor analysis
Flow mapping
Ideation
Wireframing
Prototyping for user testing
Making wishlists collaborative
What I did:
Mapped and reviewed the existing journey
Conducted competitor analysis for collaborative wishlists
Explored potential solutions
Created wireframs for future user testing
Flow of the existing journey before any changes
Flow of existing journey, close up
Flow of existing journey, close up
Competitor analysis, flow maps
Competitor analysis, flow map, Amazon close up
Example of exploration work
Example of exploration work
Wireframes of potential solutions
Signed out wishlists
What I did:
Drew several iterations of userflows to explore possible solutions
Competitor analysis
Explored potential solutions
Created wireframs for future user testing
Flow diagram of one of the proposed solutions
Exploration
Exploration, close up
Exploration, idea 1
Exploration, idea 2
Exploration, idea3
‘Save for Later’ within basket
What I did:
Reviewed existing journey
Competitor analysis
Designed some low fidelity key pages to further explore ideas
Explored potential solutions
Created wireframs for future user testing
Research
Idea 1 - Mobile
Idea 1 - Desktop
Idea 2 - Mobile
Idea 2 (nothing saved) - Desktop
Idea 2 (something saved) - Desktop
Idea 3 - Mobile
Idea 3 - Desktop
Holistic ‘best in class’ solution
I thought we could improve the customer experience further and potentially increase conversion rates by taking a more holistic approach to the entire ‘save’ functionality on the website.
The business case
John Lewis’s analytical data showed that an item added to a wishlist is nearly a third more likely to convert to a sale, so any increase in wishlist usage should see an increase in conversion rates.
With over £3.3 billion of online sales in a single year (JLP Full-Year Results 10 March 2022 - John Lewis Partnership) even a small increase in conversion rates could result in millions of pounds in extra revenue.
The vast majority of wishlists on JohnLewis.com, only ever have 1 or 2 items and in a single month, only 164,000 items were added to a wishlist via a browser compared with 1,630,000 added via a mobile app. So there was clearly an opportunity to dramatically increase wishlist usage via the website.
Customers sharing wishlists with friends and family can bring new people to your site you would not normally reach. However out of 5,814,659 live wishlists on JohnLewis.com, only 40,303 were set as an occasion and of those occasion lists, only 185 were shared with others and there was currently no ability for multiple customers to add to the same list, making it impossible to create joint wedding or nursery lists. Making it easier to share and collaborate wishlists would capitalise on these opportunities.
Neilson Norman Group Report
My research led me to a report the Neilson Norman Group had produced on wishlists which, after examining more than 100 B2C sites over several years, outlined best practices. This proved to be a valuable tool in assessing my own solutions.
Included in the report:
Many people associate the term ‘wishlist’ with greed and are actually more likely to share lists that use more “neutral language”
The importance of reminding “customers of their wishlist items in the checkout process”
Making customers sign in to save items, “can feel disruptive to customers”
Potential pain points
I had already uncovered some pain points when creating and sharing wishlists in the current wishlist experience and the new request for a ‘Save for later’ feature in Basket might only add more confusion, as it would be doing the same job as Wishlist, but saving to a different place.
Analytical data for JohnLewis.com wishlist usage
A comprehensive and holistic redesign of John Lewis's 'save' functionality
Exploration into how to save on a product page
Exploration into how to save on a product page
Competitor analysis
Excerpt from Neilson Norman report on wishlists
Exploration of 'Save for later'
Excerpt from Neilson Norman report on wishlists
Competitor analysis
The idea
The idea was to create one space for all saved items that could be utilised at several points in the customer’s shopping experience.
My aims:
Reduce existing friction when creating new saved lists
Introduce the ability to save whilst not logged into the system
Give the customer the ability to make lists collaborative easily
Encourage more sharing of saved lists by removing the guilt associated with the word ‘wishlist’
Make it simple for customers to find their saved items, in one place where they were all stored
Create more cross-promotion opportunities in the ‘saved’ space
Increase conversion rates
User testing
I captured as many of my ideas as I could in a series of mid-fidelity prototypes. I worked closely with a John Lewis UX Research specialist in putting these (mobile first) prototypes into some user tests via UserTesting.com
Saving with only one list
Signed out save / create a new list / share
New collaborator added / message within list
Save for later, concept
The user testing results
The results from the user testing were both encouraging and enlightening, some top-level insights were:
The wording of ‘save; was appropriate and understood in most cases, but some participants thought it would be better to say ‘save for later’ when in Basket.
Participants generally didn’t save items while signed out as it wasn’t expected to work
Participants were able to create and share a wishlist with ease in the prototypes
Naming and dating a save list is a bonus but not crucial
Collaboratively building a saved list was useful for some, but chat functionality was deemed unnecessary
Moving items from Basket to Save list useful
Participants preferred to have multiple saved lists hidden under a dropdown menu rather than multiple 'save to' buttons
Overall reaction to prototypes was positive and it gave a feeling of collaboration
Prototypes scored very high on ease of use, between 4.25 and 5 out of 5, with 5 being very easy to use.
“For me personally, I like to just shop as a guest, when I’m purchasing something, I just want to be able to purchase it as quickly as possible”
— Participant 1 (Proto 5), John Lewis user testing sessions, on signed-out wishlist functionality
“I think it’s great. I think the view and edit feature is the best. It’s like AirBnB collaborates in kind of thing where you can like all search for flats or houses.”
— Participant 4 (Proto 5), John Lewis user testing sessions, on collaborative wishlists
Outcome
When my contract ended, I had successfully demonstrated the business case for implementing several new features for the save function and argued for a holistic approach, supported by external evidence and our own user testing.
By the time I left, some of the features, such as a 'save for later' in Basket and tweaks to wishlist creation, had already been implemented. A clear roadmap was also in place for the future implementation of more robust changes and additions.