In 1888, 26-year-old William Henry Belk opened a retailer that might later develop into America’s largest privately owned division retailer chain: Belk. As we speak, the corporate has 290 places, primarily throughout the southeastern US, and Belk.com is the seventh most visited e-commerce and procuring web site within the US. However even a profitable retailer like Belk faces digital challenges. The typical international cart abandonment charge throughout e-commerce retailers is a whopping 70%, in response to 2024 information from the client expertise researchers on the Baymard Institute. The institute additionally posits, primarily based on usability testing, that the common large-scale e-commerce web site might make practically 40 enhancements to its checkout circulate—an effort that would end in a 35% conversion charge improve.
To get forward of those industrywide challenges, Belk’s administration staff known as for a six-month e-commerce overhaul, together with redesigning the procuring and checkout experiences. As a part of this broader initiative to streamline the acquisition funnel, I used to be requested to rethink the procuring bag expertise (i.e., how clients assessment their picks prior to purchasing) and the following checkout circulate, throughout which customers present delivery and fee particulars.
The redesigned web site is a vivid illustration of how empathizing with customers’ wants—on this case, these of a largely older viewers—can result in an improved e-commerce expertise that reinforces buyer satisfaction, conversion charges, and gross sales.
The E-commerce Checkout Problem
Belk’s government staff needed to launch an MVP (minimal viable product) in six months, a possible however aggressive timeline. The staff had already developed a reasonably deep understanding of the corporate’s person base, so the design course of grew out of current evaluation fairly than new person analysis. Belk knowledgeable designers that the corporate caters to an viewers that’s practically 80% feminine, with its largest buyer base between the ages of 55 and 64 years previous. What’s extra, 65% of Belk’s clients are 45 years or older, 46% arrive on the positioning through direct visitors, and the common customer views 5.19 pages and stays on the positioning for greater than 4 minutes.
To enhance this current analysis, I analyzed the websites of rivals like Nordstrom and turned to the Baymard Institute to assessment greatest apply examples of cart and checkout use instances and design patterns. I additionally drew on my expertise designing and launching desk linen model Prado y Barrio and a earlier challenge designing a loyalty app for Etos, one of many largest drugstore chains within the Netherlands. Each roles uncovered me to a vital e-commerce precept: Eradicating pointless steps from the buyer journey is crucial.
Inspecting Belk’s web site, I made up my mind that the checkout circulate had too many pages and an excessive amount of textual content, the call-to-action (CTA) buttons had been inconsistent and never ideally positioned, and there weren’t sufficient photographs to assist consumers see and perceive what they had been buying. For the audience of middle-aged and older customers—who, as a cohort, typically have problem seeing at shut vary because of farsightedness and circumstances like presbyopia that may develop later in life—these points had been significantly problematic. These issues are solely compounded on cell screens.
My key goal within the checkout redesign was to simplify the circulate of screens, web page parts, and interactions customers encounter as they assessment gadgets of their luggage and proceed to checkout. The adjustments particularly goal older customers, although I consider they’ll make the expertise extra user-friendly and intuitive for everybody. As a deliverable of the design effort, I shared prioritized suggestions for usability adjustments throughout Belk’s cell and desktop procuring funnels.
For the procuring bag expertise, our primary aim was to simplify the web page and information customers to carry out a key habits: double-checking that the merchandise of their luggage had been the proper measurement, fashion, colour, and amount. Anybody who has ever had a pair of laughably ill-sized pants arrive on their doorstep or booked a flight for the improper date understands why this step is so essential. And returns characterize a significant loss for retailers: In 2023, clients returned $743 billion value of merchandise.
Pre-overhaul, the Belk web site provided the choice to assessment bag contents, however the design suffered from three issues:
- Promotional affords cluttered the display, distracting customers from their main objectives.
- Product photographs had been too small for some customers to see.
- A bag enhancing button let customers change their order picks at each step within the circulate—fairly than on the finish of the method after they had been prepared to take a look at.
Growing the thumbnail picture sizes was an intuitive resolution—we purchase with the eyes. However our suggestions to rid the positioning of muddle and prohibit the enhancing menu to the affirmation display got here as a response to the so-called “paradox of selection,” a time period derived from a physique of analysis that exhibits having too many decisions can result in paralysis and depart folks much less proud of what they choose.
One seminal research by researchers Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper discovered, as an example, that when grocery buyers got too many connoisseur jam decisions to buy from a show desk (i.e., 24 jam decisions versus six), they had been much less more likely to buy any jam in any respect. It’s a shocking discovering that has been embraced by fast-casual eating places with restricted menu choices resembling Chipotle and—more and more—digital product designers.
Taking the spirit of those classes to coronary heart, we made a number of tactical suggestions to the My Bag web page to scale back abandonment and amplify the CTA by eradicating distractions. These included:
- Collapsing the search bar within the cell show of the My Bag web page to restrict abandonment and add scroll depth.
- Lowering the dimensions of a Belk bank card marketing campaign banner and permitting customers to shut the window totally in the event that they’re not .
- Auto-collapsing colour, measurement, amount, and delivery particulars right into a single, uncluttered container with +/- picks for amount adjustments.
- Presenting categorical checkout fee choices later within the buy circulate, after the person has progressed to checkout.
- Including the choice to edit the bag’s contents with a modal (lightbox) that requires person engagement and eliminates the necessity to return to the product listing web page.
- Utilizing a sticky CTA button on the backside of the cell display to nudge customers via the procuring funnel.
Reimagining the Checkout Circulate
For the checkout expertise, our main goal was to condense data unfold throughout three distinctive pages—delivery particulars, fee data, and order assessment—to a single, scrollable web page.
The 80-20 rule, additionally known as the Pareto principle, helped drive our selections about what content material choices to prioritize within the design. In brief, the rule posits that 80% of enterprise outcomes are the results of the identical 20% of causes. Utilized to Belk’s cell and desktop checkout pages, these “causes” boil right down to accessibility and the way straightforward it was to view and alter order particulars, contact data, fee particulars, delivery places, and arrival pace. That is the place we directed our power.
Taking cues from Belk’s high-converting cell app, we created separate checkout flows for friends and logged-in customers. This allowed us to higher tailor the checkout expertise. Visitor customers, as an example, are unlikely to have Belk Rewards {Dollars} certificates, so we lowered the dimensions of these fields within the visitor checkout.
For logged-in customers, our focus was to maintain all related order particulars above the fold. On Belk’s earlier web site, these particulars had been displayed in a number of sections and required customers to jump-link previous key data to put an order. Our revised design contains the thumbnail picture, estimated supply date, and order worth on a single web page. This makes it simpler for customers to see suddenly what they’re shopping for, how a lot their order will price, and after they can anticipate it to reach on their doorstep.
After clients have frolicked looking for a brand new swimsuit or pair of sandals, they don’t wish to spend extra time scrolling round for the Purchase button. A sticky Place Order CTA pinned to the underside of the checkout web page that stays in place regardless of how far down the display the person scrolls encourages them to finish their purchases. With their contact data, handle, and fee data saved, there is no such thing as a cause to ask for this data: Logged-in customers can full checkout in two clicks.
In a snapshot, our key suggestions included:
- Lowering a three-page, multistep checkout course of to a easy one-step checkout.
- Including a sticky CTA to the underside of the cell and desktop screens to maintain the person’s aim in thoughts and encourage funnel development.
- Consolidating type fields (e.g., e-mail, telephone quantity, ZIP code, metropolis) to enhance scroll depth.
- Incorporating titles with giant, legible textual content fonts inside enter fields to enhance accessibility.
- Displaying an above-the-fold order abstract with thumbnail photographs, order worth, and achievement particulars.
- Defaulting to bank card for visitor fee, and offering different choices for PayPal and Afterpay.
Coding Design Options
Most of the choices the brand new checkout circulate affords clients—together with in-store pickup, same-day supply (in some areas), and dropshipping—required the event staff to reconfigure algorithms and write discrete code strings to answer edge instances and geographic dependencies. One of many core challenges of the redesign was to accommodate a number of fee and achievement choices into the supply code.
As an illustration, whereas normal shipments can attain anyplace within the US inside 15 days, same-day supply is simply accessible for patrons in choose ZIP codes. Belk’s e-commerce staff has performed a superb job budgeting time to accommodate such nuances, that are essential to the client expertise however require pretty refined software program engineering to execute.
On the workflow stage, attaining such a excessive stage of person customization has meant near-constant communication between the design and growth groups. A Figma web page of added eventualities was my largest file for the challenge, and I in contrast notes with the engineering staff practically day by day to optimize the UX of reward card purchases, different fee choices, and different eventualities.
One other problem was that, whereas Belk’s e-commerce web site capabilities as a market for third-party retailers, free and discounted delivery incentives aren’t at all times accessible for these retailers’ merchandise, which additionally fall underneath completely different return insurance policies. Distinguishing them as “market merchandise” with an accompanying label was essential to carry readability to the acquisition course of and, hopefully, keep away from misunderstandings that may frustrate customers and injury their belief.
Whereas we did our greatest to accommodate edge instances, in some cases, preserving issues easy and cost-efficient required arduous decisions. Initially, we had needed to present customers a approach to cut up a cargo—say, routing certainly one of two pairs of slacks to a house handle and the second pair to a piece handle. However conversations with the event staff and additional market evaluation revealed that the comfort the characteristic would carry to a tiny subset of customers didn’t warrant the appreciable time and staffing expense it will require to code.
If there’s a lesson right here, it’s this: Comfort will be the linchpin of e-commerce, however the way you ship it must be primarily based on person habits and by no means pursued so zealously it cannibalizes different elements of your enterprise.
Collaboration Breeds Confidence and Belief
E-commerce checkout is a realm of digital design that calls on open collaboration from stakeholders throughout a company. On this case, dialogue between the design and growth groups dropped at mild options neither group would have arrived at by itself, resembling the way to geographically section choices for same-day delivery. Prolonged conversations with the advertising staff led to equally essential revelations. Promotional banners, as an example, may be an efficient gross sales software, but when inappropriately positioned or too grasping for display actual property, they’ll irritate clients and kill gross sales. Right here, the answer was a compromise: We saved the banners, however shrunk them so that they didn’t push the CTA under the fold.
Placing the proper stability in these ambiguous conditions requires a holistic method and open communication throughout groups. Generally you must push arduous to advance your concepts; different instances, it’s greatest to pay attention.
The media and measurement agency Ovative Group carried out a three-month audit of Belk’s redesign in early 2024 and made solely minor solutions for enchancment, so we launched the authorised adjustments to the desktop and cell procuring bag and checkout pages—and Belk clients are responding effectively to the streamlined experiences. For me as a UI/UX designer, this challenge underscored the enterprise worth of designing an intuitive, user-friendly e-commerce checkout expertise. Investing in considerate digital design—or redesign—may also help manufacturers keep away from the widespread drawback of cart abandonment and allow extra clients to finish their purchases.
