Zoe Lehmann - John Lewis – Carpet Calculator

Simplifying Carpet Buying with a Self-Serve Calculator
Company: John Lewis | Role: Lead UI Designer | Platform: Web

Empowering customers to get a personalised quote and place an order, for carpet, underlay and fitting based on their room dimensions – driving profitable flooring sales for simple room needs.

Problems to solve

Long lead times
Customers who want to buy flooring for a simple room (up to 5m wide) can wait up to 28 days to order as they are required to book an estimator appointment.

Current proposition can be hard to shop and has limited customer appeal.

Appointment inefficiency
Estimators spend time travelling to customers home’s to measure simple rooms which a customer should be able to measure themselves.

Missed sales opportunity
Competitors offer the option to self serve so we may be losing out on sales by not offering our customers this option.

No digital presence online
Therefore the proposition is very manually driven by partners who are unable to add special value due to the complexities involved.

Results from initial A/B test

7.5% of customers used the calculator tool
0.9% clicked to book an estimator appointment
8.1% increase in carpet swatch orders, meaning the calculator is driving more people to order a swatch
Learnings from products such as made-to-measure blinds and curtains, indicate that customers ordering a swatch are more likely to order and spend more when they do

My role & contributions

Carried out competitor analysis
Established requirements and analysed existing end-to-end journey
Facilitated concept workshop
Presented ideas to team and stakeholders
Produced low and high fidelity responsive prototypes
Helped define style and behaviours using design pattern library

Supported with design iterations
Collaborated with Service designer/UX, User researcher, UX writer, Product Owner, Business Analyst, Delivery Lead, QA and developers
Defined customer and partner experience via user testing and collaboration with subject matter experts
Attended and contributed to meetings with key stakeholders
Promoted and educated on agile ways of working

Existing customer journey

Overview of current end-to-end customer journey for carpets and hard flooring.

Proposed end-to-end customer journey with opportunities identified

Using the service design principle for flooring this could be then applied to a shared and scalable framework across multiple categories

Opportunities across physical and digital touch points

Existing services and processes

Where to start

The current carpet journey to supply and fit, was identified as the largest revenue opportunity and the proposition with fewest dependencies.

Overview of existing online journey

Understanding the existing online customer journey

Phase 1 - Enabling customers to self serve

A tool to allow customers to self serve and create a rough estimate based on their room dimensions. This was believed to be a positive first step in moving towards a future vision of enabling customers to being able to purchase for simple flooring.

Wireframe for potential tool

1. Starting point for all scenarios

2. 'Simple room' dimensions added

3. Estimate displayed based on dimensions added

4. Rough quotes provided when halls, stairs and landing is selected

5. Request a call back form for triage call

6. Confirmation of callback booking

Proposed high level customer journey

Simple journey = Rooms up to 5 metres wide
Complex journey = More than 1 room or any room wider than 5 metres or halls, stairs and landing

User testing

Carpet calculator prototype designed and built for user testing

Approach

2 rounds of user testing with 8 participants across desktop and mobile devices.

5 participants from round 1 were invited back to user test the prototypes in round 2.

Research objectives were:

Round 1 - Understanding customer mental models

Understand customer needs and pain points when purchasing carpet
Are there different scenarios/personas related to journeys that have differing needs/pain points/mental models?
Build understanding of customers propensity to self serve (e.g measuring, estimate, purchasing)

Round 2 - Validating experience and designs

Understand how users use the quote calculator for different carpet scenarios
Find out expectations for next steps after using the calculator

Validation of calculator accuracy

In addition to testing prototypes there was collaboration with estimators to verify the accuracy of the calculator in comparison with their existing tool used.

Findings

Round 1 - Mental model learnings

Several participants mentioned returning to company's where they has purchased carpet before and had a good experience
John Lewis wasn’t top of mind as a place to purchase carpets
Gauging the quality of a carpet online was a challenge
Most participants had specific requirements for their carpet
There was mixed confidence in measuring rooms

Round 2 – Calculator learnings

Calculator was well received, and found to be easy to use particularly for simple rooms
Mix in preference for metric vs imperial measurements
It was understood that prices shown online were estimates
Some extra granularity on price breakdown was desired for complex rooms

Ways of working

Having to work remotely as a team within different timezones, it was important to establish a collaborative way of working via online tools to achieve successful delivery.

Worked collaboratively with UX Writer to support with content

Visually represented desired user flow which helped discussions with developers

Iterations made to achieve MVP

There was a need to deliver and learn from an MVP via 50/50 A/B test against the current control experience.

Iterations made based on user research findings and accuracy validation of our tool:

Measurements would be provided using ‘metres’ only. Feet would be a future iteration
Links out to existing help guides and booking journeys would be utilised instead of incorporating everything in page to start with
Infographics for halls, stairs and landing size guides removed but copy to inform best next steps and rationale provided
Tooltips used to provide further support and information

Why build it?

To test appetite for customers to self measure
To understand if showing an estimated cost upfront has impact on behaviour
First step towards allowing customers to self serve and order online

How's it being tested?

50/50 split A/B test launched on carpet product description pages
Measuring engagement with calculator, impact on swatch ordering and appointment bookings

Results so far...

Initial indications from 50/50 split A/B test show that:

7.5%
of customers used the calculator

0.9%
clicked to book an estimator appointment

8.1%
increase in swatch orders

Calculator engagement:

7.5% of customers on carpet product pages used the calculator
0.9% clicked through to book an appointment with an estimator
Split between room measurements entered 49% simple room, 28% Halls, stairs & landing, 31% complex room

Calculator impact

8.1% increase in customers ordering a swatch, meaning the calculator is driving more people to order a swatch
No significant impact on customers booking an estimator appointment
Customers may not understand what will happen when primary button is clicked on first step
Learnings from products such as made-to-measure blinds and curtains, indicate that customers ordering a swatch are more likely to order and spend more when they do. Assumption is that this would be similar for flooring

Next steps

Explore iterations to show calculator on load of PDP and direct customers looking for a halls, stairs and landing to estimator appointment earlier in the journey
Include functionality to allow customers to add additional extras such as uplift and removal and furniture moving
Conversations with basket and checkout teams have already started to understand what is achievable and desirable in allowing customers to transact a simple carpet online
Discovery into aftercare to ensure customers are supported and have the information they need to care for carpet prior to purchase and after fitting
Continue to test, learn and iterate and evolve journey through multiple touch points to enable a seamless omni-channel experience