3 min read

Redesign: "Checkout"
(Vroom Native App)

The Problem

The "checkout" process is how customers would reserve a car and start the buying process. This workflow needed to be built into the Vroom native app. With research, we found that most customers come back to the checkout flow 4.9 times. They change their mind about a purchase, let time go by, and often switch to a different car. The old design, a wizard, did not save data that they had previously entered. There was definitely room for improvement.

Business Goals

Self-Service. The customer should not need phone support
Increase conversion
Decrease time to complete checkout

Secondary Goals

Accuracy, speed, and ease

Original Design (Wizard)

"Beth is detail-oriented, dependable, and thorough."

—Thomas McNair, VP of Product

My Role

I led this project which included research, design iterations, and usability testing.

Methodologies

Intake
Understand current state
Stakeholder interviews
Customer interviews (review insights from earlier research)
Competitive analysis
Card sort
Design iterations
Usability study

The Process

• Stakeholder Interviews

I interviewed stakeholders throughout the company in order to understand current pain points and other areas that could be improved. Stakeholders included employees from the customer journey team, customer transactions, and representatives from the credit and sales teams.

Specific pain points we found:

Customers were confusing the deposit and the downpayment. "They are overpaying by $249, which is the deposit cost."
Customers were frustrated that they had to reenter data that was already collected.
There were additional questions that we could ask that would cut out phone calls later such as, "How much do you owe on your car?" This information would be validated later, but having it up front could save time for agents.
There were steps in checkout that didn't need to be in checkout.
NPS comments have shown that customer were sometimes surprised by shipping costs or tax & fee costs. Customers wanted greater transparency about all of the costs, right from the start.
The current design said, "Congratulations" on the last step and gave the impression that they were finished. We needed to more clearly and urgently guide users to next steps (such as uploading documents) which needed to be completed within 24 hours.

• Customer Interviews

Previously, other teammates had interviewed customers about the checkout process. I reviewed insights from that work. These findings mostly validated what we were hearing from stakeholders.

• Card Sort

I did a card sort with stakeholders to see if there was a more efficient way to organize the checkout process. We found areas that could be improved or combined and steps that could be moved outside of checkout. The workflow was originally nine steps, and now it would be six. This analysis was a very fast way to get the insights we needed to start the design iterations.

Compiled Version of Card Sort

• Design Iterations

I documented the current state of each step, the pain points and recommended improvements, as well as competitive analysis. I then began designing and regularly met with stakeholders to review each iteration for feedback until we were confident and ready to do a usability study.

• Usability Study

We tested the prototype with a 20 question script and four participants. We found that there were several areas that needed to be improved.

Findings:

Users didn't understand that they had to do ALL of the six steps. They wanted to skip to later steps. An easy fix for this was to number the cards. This cleared up confusion.
The slider at the top did not look clickable. We changed the name to "View Summary," and that alone made a huge difference. But, we decided to also used a "down arrow" to make it very clear that it was clickable.
We found that there were many areas in the payment method flow that could be improved. It was easy to see that customer expectation did not match the design. Customers wanted to reserve a loan offer, but weren't ready to commit. They like to continue looking at finance options (outside of Vroom), and later decide. The design did not account for this. This specific workflow needed closer attention and this became a future project.

Conclusion

We reviewed each of the pain points from the interviews and usability study and addressed them in the new designa. Now, when customers stop and restart the checkout workflow, they will immediately have an overview of the entire checkout process instead of seeing just one step at a time with the wizard. We were able to decrease checkout from nine steps to six. This new design allows customers to see what they have already completed, and then they can quickly take next steps. We were confident that the goals of self-service, increase conversion, & decreased time to complete checkout were met.

New Design

Last Steps

Redesign: "Checkout" (Vroom Native App)

Redesign: "Checkout"
(Vroom Native App)