Enhancing the Checkout Experience for Salty Maggie Swimwear
September 2024
When?
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2022
Who?
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Salty Maggie, an environmentally-friendly swimwear brand.
What?
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Redesign of the checkout experience to increase sales conversions and improve user satisfaction for their eco-friendly swimwear brand.
The problem
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Despite consistent website traffic, the brand struggled with low sales, highlighting a gap in converting visitors into customers.
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Research revealed high shopping cart abandonment as a key issue. The creative solution (a floating cart feature) simplified the checkout process, leading to a 700% increase in conversions and significantly improving the shopping experience.
Designing for Eco-Conscious Growth
Salty Maggie Swimwear champions bold, eco-conscious fashion by creating stylish swimwear using sustainable materials and offering 100% carbon-neutral deliveries. The brand is committed to reducing the environmental impact of fashion while empowering customers to make ethical purchasing decisions.
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However, despite strong website traffic, their sales conversions were falling short of expectations, prompting a deeper investigation into their online shopping experience.
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After designing Salty Maggie’s website and branding in a previous collaboration, I was approached to help improve their checkout experience.
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By analysing user behavior, I identified pain points in the shopping journey, and I designed a floating cart button that made it easier for users to complete purchases.
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This solution resulted in a remarkable 700% increase in sales conversions, improving both the customer experience and the brand’s alignment with its sustainable mission.
User Research:
To uncover the reasons behind low sales conversions, I conducted a thorough analysis of user behavior. The research focused on identifying pain points and understanding where users were encountering friction in the shopping journey. Key research activities included:
Session Recordings and Behavioural Analysis
​I reviewed recordings of users interacting with the website to observe their behavior in real time. This provided valuable insights into how users navigated the site and engaged with key features:
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Navigating to Product Pages: Users were able to browse and add items to their cart without significant difficulty, indicating that the product discovery process was relatively smooth.
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Struggling to Locate the Cart: Many users appeared lost after adding items to their cart, often failing to locate the cart icon to proceed to checkout.​
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Visiting Multiple Unrelated Pages: After adding items, users frequently moved between different sections of the website, signalling confusion or uncertainty about the next step. This behavior highlighted a disconnect in the checkout flow.​
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These observations suggested that while users were engaging with the products, they encountered friction when transitioning from browsing to purchasing.
Conversion Funnel Analysis
To complement the behavioural observations, I analysed data from the website’s conversion funnel to identify specific drop-off points. This quantitative approach revealed the following insights:
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Successful Cart Additions: Users were consistently adding items to their cart, which ruled out issues with product interest or selection.
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Drop-offs at the Checkout Transition: The largest drop-off occurred not during browsing or cart addition but during the move from the cart to the checkout page.
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Friction from a Hidden Cart Icon: The cart icon’s low visibility emerged as a critical issue, preventing users from easily accessing their selected items and completing their purchases.
The Conversions Funnel for
E-Commerce
The largest user drop-off occurred during the move to the checkout page.
Main Insights from User Research
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High Product Engagement: Users were highly engaged with product pages, spending time selecting sizes and viewing details, suggesting interest in the products themselves.
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Funnel Drop-off Post-Product Selection: A significant portion of users added items to their carts but did not proceed further, suggesting friction in the transition to checkout.
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Unclear Cart Access: Many users visited unrelated pages after adding products, likely because the cart icon was not easily noticeable or intuitive to access.
Hypotheses
The Solution
The solution to Salty Maggie’s low conversion rates was guided by the hypotheses developed from user research, focusing on reducing decision fatigue, improving cart visibility, and enhancing the overall shopping flow. Based on these insights, I implemented the following key changes:
1. Simplifying Navigation
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As the original designer of Salty Maggie’s branding and website, I was familiar with its structure. Simplifying navigation was a low-effort first step that could be implemented quickly to test whether it would address user frustrations.:
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Reduced redundancy by consolidating product collections and filters, ensuring users had fewer, clearer options to explore.
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Streamlined the top menu by removing unnecessary links and simplifying categories to make navigation more straightforward.
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These changes made it simpler for users to find what they were looking for without feeling overwhelmed, resulting in increased product discovery and engagement.
Redundant collections and an overcrowded menu made the navigation structure complex
Consolidated collections and a simplified menu to streamline navigation
Testing and Validation
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After implementing these changes, I tracked user behavior and analysed conversion data to measure their impact.
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The results showed no significant improvement in sales or user behavior. At this stage, I proposed a more thorough analysis of user behavior, including a funnel analysis, to better understand the drop-off points in the shopping journey.
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The funnel analysis revealed that users were successfully adding items to their cart, but the main drop-off occurred during the transition from cart to checkout. This highlighted cart accessibility as the key issue to address.
2. Floating Cart Button for Improved Cart Access
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One of the most significant barriers to checkout was the lack of visibility and accessibility of the cart. The cart icon was located in a corner of the page, where users often overlooked it after adding items. Analysis of user behavior showed that users frequently browsed away from the cart and struggled to return to it, leading to high drop-off rates.
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To address this, I designed and implemented a floating cart button:
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The button followed users throughout the website, ensuring they could access their cart at any point without needing to navigate back.​
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Its placement and design made it more prominent and easy to use, reducing friction in moving from product discovery to checkout.
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This change drastically improved cart-to-checkout transitions and eliminated a key usability issue.
Testing and Validation
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After implementing the changes, I conducted a before-and-after comparative analysis to validate their impact:
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Behavioural Tracking: I analysed session recordings, funnel metrics, and cart activity to measure improvements in user engagement with the floating cart button and navigation.
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Iterative Testing: By monitoring post-implementation analytics, I ensured that the simplified navigation and floating cart button addressed the identified issues and improved cart-to-checkout transitions.
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This approach confirmed the success of the solutions, with a 700% increase in conversions as the ultimate outcome.
Impact of the Design
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By addressing both usability and navigation challenges, this solution created a significantly more intuitive and enjoyable shopping experience for Salty Maggie’s users.
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The redesign not only made the checkout process seamless but also led to a remarkable 700% increase in sales conversions, transforming the brand’s ability to engage customers and compete in the eco-conscious fashion market.
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This success reinforced Salty Maggie’s mission to make sustainable shopping both accessible and impactful, driving growth and customer satisfaction.
Lessons learnt
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This project reinforced the importance of observing real user behavior to uncover hidden pain points. While simplifying navigation could have improved issues like product discovery, the key issue (cart accessibility) was only identified through detailed funnel analysis and session recordings. Iterative design and testing proved essential in addressing these challenges effectively.
The Solution
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The redesigned checkout experience focused on reducing user friction and improving cart accessibility. Simplifying the navigation streamlined the browsing experience, while the introduction of a floating cart button ensured users could seamlessly proceed to checkout from any page. These changes resulted in a remarkable 700% increase in sales conversions.
What was special?
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The creative use of a floating cart button was a pivotal solution that directly addressed user frustrations and aligned with the brand’s focus on sustainability and simplicity. By emphasizing usability, the project not only improved sales but also strengthened the customer’s relationship with the brand’s eco-conscious mission.
How did I contribute?​
I conducted in-depth user research, including behavioral analysis and funnel tracking, to identify key pain points in the shopping experience. Using these insights, I designed and tested a floating cart button and simplified the website’s navigation, directly leading to improved user satisfaction and a significant boost in conversions.
What’s next? Growing the design.
Building on the success of the redesigned checkout experience, here are some potential ideas for further improving the user experience and supporting Salty Maggie’s eco-friendly mission:
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Personalised Product Recommendations: Introduce suggestions based on browsing behavior or past purchases to encourage discovery and boost conversions.
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Eco-Conscious Storytelling: Highlight the environmental impact saved with each purchase or add storytelling features to showcase the brand’s sustainability efforts, addressing visibility challenges for small eco-conscious brands.
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Community Growth Features: Explore ways to increase visibility, such as referral programs or incentives for inviting new users to shop sustainably.​
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Collaborative Product Refinement: Work with the team to continue refining product collections and offerings based on user behavior and evolving preferences.
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These ideas could further align Salty Maggie’s values with its user experience, enhancing both customer engagement and long-term loyalty.