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47% increase
in album draft to order conversion rate
86% increase
in the number of users who complete & order their album within 24 hours of starting an album
Zola has become a full wedding ecosystem; but every bride and groom knows the traditions don't end after the DJ spins his last reception track. Realizing the implications of post-wedding traditions and the potential for an additional touchpoint in the post-wedding funnel, Zola decided to provide users with a new, robust nuptial product: custom wedding albums.
Users wanted albums, and they wanted them fast, so the product team quickly cranked out an MVP. However, shortly after launching the MVP, it became clear there were several major pain points and the product was costing the company money. Issues arose relating to everything from order conversion, holes in the overall user flow, and the tech implemented not being up to par. Users were dropping off early in the album customization process and the product pitfalls resulted in a lot of support tickets, credits, an even full refunds.
As it became clear (through live-instance metrics and financial reports) Zola Albums had several issues, my teammate Kemy and I set out to find out exactly how users felt those issues could be improved and which were the most frustrating. After all, the technology and internal workflows used to launch Zola Albums was new territory, so we could not afford to fix everything at once nor miss the mark on execution.
After completed a very in-depth competitive analysis, it became apparent we were lacking in several areas; but we didn't find any competitor served as the ideal. We partnered with the business team to pinpoint 7 users to interview, most of whom we could see uploaded photos and dropped off at different points and one user actually ordered and received an album. Kemy and I teamed together to conduct interviews, about an hour long each, via Zoom. These interviews proved to be more valuable than the team could have anticipated, resulting in insights neither us nor our competitors did a great job addressing. We decided to conduct an additional twenty, unmoderated usability tests on the live MVP via usertesting.com.
Combining the synthesized insights from our user interviews, user testing, and competitive analysis, the team was able to come up with 6 different user stories, resulting in 6 defined feature sets. I tackled feature sets 1-4, while Kemy tackled 5-6. My overall goals when tackling my 4 sub-projects were to aid user education, manage user expectations, add the ability to make customization edits beyond the landing page, and ensure there was price transparency throughout the customization process.
As a part of the overall 10 week sprint, I spent 5 weeks designing feature sets 1-4. Once the designs were handed off to engineering, we went through several iterations of both design and technical QA and the features finally went live. The results of these feature updates were almost instantaneous and the team watched in awe as album sales climbed.
While Zola wishes to be considered a best in class photo album website, it is most definitely not the first. In order to better understand not only what Zola was lacking but where there were opportunities for us to stand out, we first had to gain an in-depth understanding of the user experience our competitors offered. As a result, I embarked on the arduous journey of creating wedding albums on 10 competitor sites, including, but not limited to: Artifact Uprising, Shutterfly, Minted, & Papier, and compared the experiences to Zola. I quickly felt not only the pain we inflicted upon our happy couples, but the astoundingly frustrating experiences our better-known album competitors provided, which I realized may have pushed customers to try Zola to begin with!
How did competitors handle photo uploading, resolution communication, & auto-cropping?
Aspects reviewed over 37 slides:
In what sequence did competitors have customers complete the seps required to complete an album and submit an order?
Aspects reviewed over 122 slides:
I presented these findings to the team and it was immediately apparent that while we were missing several features, the main areas we were majorly lacking in were user feedback, encouragement, and proactive error handling.
The competitive analysis gave us a pretty good handle on the what we were missing, but we wanted to talk to couples who had interacted with our existing tool to determine how we would implement. Additionally we needed to ensure we had an answer to the crucial question: why such a high drop-off rate for Zola Albums?
The only way to determine exactly which moments within the album customization flow were frustrating users and why was to speak to them directly. Product partnered with the business team to find 7 users who began customizing a wedding album. All of the users dropped off at different points, and one user actually ordered and received an album. Some of the users interviewed were already a part of the Zola ecosystem, and some had never used Zola products prior to starting an album. We approached writing the script for these interviews looking to answer three concise questions:
One week. Seven interviewees. We aimed to maximize our time by drafting a detailed plan with targeted questions covering:
Many hours of conducting and synthesizing interviews led to 6 core user stories:
Our PM Angela worked to quickly establish the overall scope and timeline, and Kemy and I excitedly got to work.
Both the PLP (Product Landing Page) PDP (Product Description Page) needed changes; but the PDP seemed to be where most of the confusion and decision fatigue began for our users. By examining funnel drop-off behavior, click rates, time on screen, and heat maps (combined with our in-depth user and competitor research) we could pinpoint several areas for opportunity on both screens:
The first touchpoint with a new, time consuming, and fairly expensive product needed more details and social proof to get initial user buy-in. The goals for updating the PLP were:
The product description page doubles as the beginning of the customization process. Here, we needed to ensure customers:
Less confusion. Creation to order time decreased. More album orders submitted.
While we saw almost instantaneous results and more users coming from outside of the Zola ecosystem, there are some considerations that could have provided an even better experience:
This project gave me my first taste of designing for software. I genuinely enjoyed designing beyond standard e-commerce patterns and solving for the multiple complexities that an album builder tool entails - while also providing an intuitive, easy-to-use tool that allows users to build beautiful albums faster..