Walmart Store Pickup – Michael Selby

Project: Walmart Store Pickup

Role: Lead UX Designer

Context

In 2014 Walmart was among the first retailers to launch a store pickup feature for their mobile app customers. Starbucks and Taco Bell had recently launched order ahead for their app users and Walmart was looking to create a seamless pickup experience for their online customers. I was the lead designer on the Store Pickup product.

Observation and problem definition

The product manager and I created with a basic set of requirements from what we knew - existing store technologies, online cart checkout experience, store service operations. With the improved geo-fencing capabilities on mobile devices, it was a natural fit for a feature like store pickup and we came up with some KPI's to improve the current experience.

Drive online business to the store
Improve wait times from 20 minutes to 5 minutes
Look for opertunities to improve the store associate experience
Provide customers with the ability to find the pickup area with their store (there were hundreds of store plans)

Solving all the things

I started by creating a customer journey map of the entire experience. The initial part of the pickup experience started at the point the customer placed an order.

The later part of the experience was the customer driving to the store, using the app to automatically check-in and meet the Walmart associate at the pickup desk in the store.

Sounds easy enough, right? Well there challenges and questions that we uncovered as we started exploring the end-to-end experience.

Store pickup was a relatively new feature for retail and there was not much business going through the pickup desk.
Was the customer coming to store to only pickup an item they purchased online, or were they also going to shop while there?
There was an education challenge for both the associate and the customer.

We launched with a solution where we had to make a lot of assumptions. With a feature that involved a lot of new technology we had to test in the field and learn from our mistakes, research and observe Walmart customers go through the experience as novices to this new service.

Real world feedback

We learned a lot right from the start and challenged our assuptions as we improved and evolved the service.

The Walmart associates communication device were outdated Motorola MC-40s
The MC-40s were not always in the posession of the associate working the pickup desk.
The pickup desk was not staffed full time.
After the customer checked in there was little information or transparency about what to do next next. If the associate never saw the check-in alert, then the customer was left waiting at the pickup desk without knowing that tapping the I'm Ready button was in vein.
Requiring the customer to check-in created an unneccesary extra step and a barrier to adoption.

Over the next few years we were able to make improvements as the feature gained traction and the store technology improved. Some of the enhancements we made were to integrate wayfinding, both to the store and in the store. We enable the customer to see what step they were in the pickup flow and provide relevant information to help them. Associates were upgraded to Android devices running lightweight apps specificically for Pickup tasks. Moving to an automatic check-in simplified the experience.

Key Takeaways

Innovation is a challenge and getting a product out there quickly is important. Being able to fail quickly and adjust is key to the success of a new product or service.