Case Study: Enhanced Shipping Options (Fall/Spring 2021)

My role

Senior UX Content Strategist

The project

The initial release of Mailchimp stores offered a very simple shipping experience that allowed users to offer up to three simple flat rates.

I paired with a senior product designer named Kateryna to imagine how we could enhance the shipping experience to match user needs and make our product experience more competitive in the e-commerce space.

The process

Step 1: Discovery

I paired with my product design partner Kateryna to complete competitor teardowns to determine what our users expect from e-commerce shipping options. We looked at several aspects of the shipping experience, including (but not limited to) shipping regions, delivery options, flat rate options, and educational resources.

Next, we aligned on our experience vision: what did we want to deliver and why? Why user problems did we want to solve?

We knew we wanted to deliver a shipping setup experience that was guided and easy-to-follow. Since it’s easy for merchants to lose money on shipping, we wanted to provide users with tips that would help them select the best shipping options for their needs.

Step 2: User testing and setting the scope

Together, Kateryna and I collaborated on a prototype of our ideal shipping experience complete with shipping region options, various shipping rates, methods (by size, by weight, flat rates, etc.), and shipping tips. We created a test plan with the help of experience research and sent it through unmoderated user testing with 12 participants.

We shared testing results in a deck with our product and engineering partners to determine which parts of the enhanced experience we’d want to focus on next.

The decision from product was to focus on 2 enhancements that would immediately benefit our users:

• Create a way for users to charge a fee per additional item added to cart.

• Create a way for users to offer conditional shipping (e.g. shipping is free if you spend $50 or more)

We called these two features “enhanced shipping” internally, and got to work.

Step 3: Design for enhanced shipping

First, we played with an idea of adding an additional step to shipping setup where users would choose whether or not to add free shipping or conditional free shipping.

After some more thought, we decided to keep all shipping rate enhancements in the same screen:

Based on what we learned in user testing, we updated the tips on the right rail to let users know why they might want to take advantage of these enhancements, but also used this content to educate them on the potential risks of offering free shipping.

Step 4: Release

This feature is now available for our users. We ended up using a new design element (seen above) to announce the release in-app to alert users to the update.

What I learned

This project was an amazing example of the power of design-led discovery. With the time to conduct competitor research, identify customer problems, develop a visionary prototype, and conduct user testing, Kateryna and I were able to deliver designs to product and engineering that could be broken into pieces and delivered little by little.

This was helpful because:

• Any work that brought into a sprint would ladder up to our ultimate experience vision

• Fewer last-minute experience questions from engineers. There will always be unexpected Qs, but the time we were able to take during discovery and prototyping helped us identify edge cases and additional considerations.

In the end, this example is one I return to often to make the case that moving “slow” allows you to move fast.