Promotions and deals
Suppliers and merchants collaborating on creating promotional sales and events
Project Overview
My Role
I was the sole designer working on end to end flow for this net-new project with no existing screens to reference. I was also functioning as the researcher facilitating user tests and interviews. I collaborated cross functionally between my team (Supplier) with the Walmart Merchant team to create a consistent experience that was also flexible enough to include the merchant’s specific capabilities.
The Problem
Suppliers and Walmart merchants collaborate on deals to set up promotions for in store, online or both. The supplier and the merchant can each create and send deals for review and approval to the other party. They outline which stores and items will be included, as well as the dates for the event and the financial details.
Today, this is all an offline process communicated via email and phone calls which makes things disorganized, creates confusion and allows details to be missed.
The Opportunity
How might we allow suppliers and walmart merchants to easily see their current, past, and drafted event proposals?
How might they clearly be able to see what they need to review and what has been sent for review?
How might they be alerted when something needs their attention or proposals are accepted, denied or updated?
How might we incorporate this offline process into the Supplier One platform to reduce friction and time spent tracking down information?
The Process
Discovery
User journey map
Mock ups
User test
Final designs
Discovery
Initial discovery was done by the business team speaking with Walmart merchants to get a rough outline of the required fields and operations.
I used this as an initial framework, but had to look at it more granularly from a supplier perspective.
The user journey
First, I mapped out the end to end flow including the back and forth actions between the supplier and the merchant. This helped me identify the necessary interactions I needed to include and confirm with my business team.
From there, I created some initial mock ups
User testing
Since this is a net new feature it was important to thoroughly user test these designs and the flow. However, since we didn’t have a researcher dedicated to our team, I performed the moderated user tests and interviews.
We performed five rounds of user tests with a mix of different types of suppliers specializing in different product departments. They consisted mainly of our larger suppliers who would be using this feature frequently.
I did rapid iterative prototyping between the tests to quickly gather a wider range of data to make the right decision as there wasn’t any existing platform to ask their opinions on.
Progress bars are greatly appreciated
Users liked seeing progress bars immediately and made them feel secure that they weren’t going to accidentally submit a deal too early, and made them feel like they were doing things right, otherwise they were like “Huh?? Where do I select items?”
Item selection should be early
Users consistently wanted to select items early on in the deal creation process. It was confusing for them to see the store selection step before item selection.
The terminology was well understood
Users understood terms like Omni and dotcom as common words they use in their day to day business. Not a single user was confused.
Buyer ID
Users wanted to be able to select the specific Buyer they wanted to send the deal to. Some validation is needed here once the feature is designed.
Optional fields were unexpected
Users did not understand the optional fields of “Job, Publication, Marketing name, and Supplier Program ID.” I recommend removing or de-emphasizing them.
Financial details should all be in one step
It was confusing to have some of the deal financial selections on the first step and then also on the unit financials step. Made more sense on one step after item selection.
Users were confused by the editable table
Because only two columns were editable in the table and the other read only cells were in a disabled state the users thought they had done something wrong.
Ongoing confusion on units
We ultimately did not land on a design that all Suppliers understood or expected. I recommend a little more scrutiny for this step to verify that it has the correct info.
Commenting was valued
The ability to write comments to the merchant to negotiate the parameters of the deal was highly valued.
See the final design in action
After gathering and analyzing all the user feedback I created the final designs guided by their input.
How to gain adoption of the Co-ops program
Lastly, we created a landing page describing all the programs Walmart provides that help suppliers grow their business. The goal was to provide clarity and drive adoption to these programs with a simple marketing page that gave them a spring board into learning more.
In the future when we had the ability to recommend items that would benefit from being enrolled in a Co-op and could estimate the GMV returns, we planned to include a “Grow your business” section on the homepage, coupled with other similar initiatives as a spring board.