SHEIN Summer Internship:
Using design mindset to boost revenue while optimizing the user shopping experience
UX Designer Jun 2021 - Aug 2021 User Experience Team Sketch, Illustrator, Jira
Role Timeline Team Tool
CONTEXT
In the summer of 2021, I interned at the SHEIN Shenzhen China office as an experience design intern. Our team focuses on the usability, function, design, and branding of the SHEIN app and website. Being one of the three UX designers in the team, we worked closely and cross-functionally to provide the UX design for the V7.7.0 launch.
01
Internship
Overview
PROBLEM
During the pandemic, the rapid expansion of foreign markets attracted a large number of new users. Since the newly-registered users were not familiar with SHEIN and did not develop shopping habits on mobile phones, the conversion rate was low. Thus, the company set the strategic objective of improving user stickiness by providing a higher-quality user experience.
02
Final outcomes glance
03
Conduct user research to understand customers' frustration and find design opportunities
We added entrances on three critical pages to collect customers' feedback.
In order to discover users' pain points and set optimization goals, we added a feedback button on pages that have high user traffic to collect users' opinions.
Homepage
Search
Recommend
I used google sheet to organize all the feedback and share it with team members.
Besides adding the survey to the app, I collected customers' negative comments from the customer service center to find their pain points.
Based on the feedback and negative comments collected from the customer service center, I collaborated with product team to finalize the goals of launching the new version.
04
Use OKR to break down design challenges and set goals
OBJECTIVES
Improve the conversion rate of the first order of new users in Mexico
1
Optimize the user experience of shopping and placing orders on app
2
Build a strong brand identity and visual language
3
KEY RESULTS
Help users to achieve the free shipping requirement easily, so as to activate new users
Enhance the reach of discount information to new users and stimulate their desire to place the first order
Optimize the user interaction experience in the order placement process
Aggregate products with leaderboards to help users target their ideal products efficiently
Unify the visual style of the SHEIN app and optimize the interface quality
Configure the component library to improve the design and launching efficiency in the future
Empower new business with design, and improve user decision-making efficiency
05
Ideate design actions for each key result to achieve objectives
OBJECTIVE 1
Improve the conversion rate of the newly registered users in Mexico
Through data analysis, I found that the number of new registrations in Mexico Station has surged in the last six months, but the conversion rate of the first order is low. Through discussions with all the team members, we decided to firstly focus on improving the conversion rate in the Mexico site.
Based on the collected data, I highlighted three main reasons that stop users from placing their first order.
high freight fee/free shipping threshold
worries about the payment and logistics services
no coupons/points in the account
KEY RESULT 1
Help users to achieve the free shipping threshold easily
Action 1: display a pop-up window after clicking the "Add to bag" button to remind users about the free-shipping threshold
The AB testing result shows that Plan B has a more significant improvement, so we decided to use plan B as the final plan. I also added a banner that shows the countdown on the checkout page to give users a sense of urgency.
Action 2: when the user does not meet but is close to the free shipping amount threshold, displaying pop-ups for recommended products and coupon prompts to help users make decisions
Optimize Microcopy
Using passive voice is not user-friendly. It is too formal and lacks product warmth.
The new microcopy shortens the distance between the product and users. Also, it uses the herd mentality to stimulate users' interest to browse the recommended products.
The difference between the price of the product that the user has added to the car and the threshold for using coupons is a dynamic value. Thus, it is necessary to consider the microcopy when the value reaches the marginal value (0).
- When the value is not zero, the microcopy would be "Buy X to enjoy your coupon."
- When the value is zero, the microcopy would be "Meet the coupon usage amount."
Most users are not rational consumers because the human way of thinking is occupied by the system one. (Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman) Thus, I find out that I can highlight the points that users are most concerned about, such as the special features of the product, promotions, and scarcity, to prompt the users' perception of the product value and make a purchase decision.
Action 1: add a promotion information module on the product detail page to reduce users' price sensitivity, so as to boost sales
Plan A
Plan B
The stock of products is insufficient.
The promotion duration ends soon.
The coupon is about to expire.
Action 2: design a user flow to guide new customers to collect and use coupons efficiently
I created a user journey map based on the process of purchasing and placing an order on the app to find optimization opportunities. After analyzing users' pain points from the journey map, I narrowed down the problem scale to optimize the user flow of collecting coupons after registration, so as to promote the activation of new users.
Create user journey map to find design opportunity for the optimized user flow
Create new user flow to provide users guidance to register and get coupons
Before
After
New users enter the homepage
Sign in/register page
Pop-up after completing registration
KEY RESULT 2
Enhance the reach of discount information to new users and stimulate their desire to place the first order
KEY RESULT 3
Empower new business with design and improve users' decision-making efficiency
In order to enhance the security perception of new users when purchasing, the business team proposed the requirement of adding a Q&A section on the product detail page. To understand the role that the new Q&A section plays on the product detail page that has the most user traffic, I analyzed the structure of the product detail page in-depth.
What's the role of the Q&A section on the Product Detail Page?
Analyze the structure of different modules on the Product Detail Page
Product image
Price display
Color choice
Size choice
Logistics and purchase security guarantee
Leaderboard
Basic info about the product
Model information
Brand
Reviews
Lookbook
Banner
Recommendation
Build user decision model
After analyzing the page structure, I found that the sections of decision-stimulated information and decision-reinforced information have the greatest impact on user decision-making on the product detail page. Thus, we decided to focus on three modules to strengthen the core information level, highlight key points in order to improve the user's decision-making efficiency.
Basic decision information
Decision stimulated information
Decision reinforced information
Determine the optimization points on the Product Detail Page
Shopping security module
Review module
Q&A module
Decision assisted information
Action 1: optimize the information hierarchy of the shopping security guarantee module
In order to understand the users' attention to the safety information of all aspects of the product, we conducted a questionnaire survey to the users. We randomly sampled users in Mexico, Israel, and Italy, and the number of samples collected was 400. The priority of safety information is obtained through sorting and applied to the information hierarchy arrangement of the shopping safety module.
Before
After
Put the core information of the shopping safety module on the first-level page
1. Safe Payments
2. Secure Logistics
3. Customer Service
Action 2: optimize the information in the "Reviews" module
Level Tag
Real user information to provide more accurate reference to other users
Promote interaction between users to create a better community atmosphere
Set a design system to better communicate with the software developing team
OBJECTIVE 2
Optimize the user experience of shopping and placing orders on the app
User Flow
Log in
Choose product
Learn about coupons
Add to cart
Learn about logistics
Use coupons
Place an order
By analyzing the user's purchase process and funnel model, we found two places with the highest user loss in the experience map. Therefore, we aim to improve the user's shopping experience this time on the order payment page and the product detail page.
KEY RESULT 1
Optimize the order placement process, decreasing the loss of users
1. Add reminders to guide users to use coupons
2. Highlight the entrance to the coupon center
3. Exploration for visual optimization of coupons
Create a prototype to better communicate with the software engineering team
Coupon Center
KEY RESULT 2
Aggregate products with leaderboards to help users target their ideal products efficiently
Add an entrance of leaderboard on the product detail page
Add a ranking tag on the top three products to enhance the promotion atmosphere on the leaderboard page
Add a Favorite and Add to Cart buttons to meet a variety of shopping scenarios
Display the percentage of "Likes" for each product. And use customers' "herd effect"
The currently browsed products will be marked with special marks to prevent users from getting lost in the process of jumping and browsing
OBJECTIVE 3
Build strong brand identity and consistent visual language
KEY RESULT 1
Unify the visual style of the SHEIN app and optimize the interface quality
Consistent
Clear
Identity
Before starting, I set a principle that can guide me to improve the visual quality of the icons. After several iterations, I designed the following version that I kept all the icons to be linear and used single color to keep the consistency.
KEY RESULT 2
Configure the component library to improve the design and developing efficiency in the future
In order to ensure the visual unity in subsequent revisions and improve the work efficiency of our team, I am responsible for reorganizing the existing components and naming them according to categories, so that other designers can quickly find and use them. I also filled in some previously missing and newly added components, which improved team's design resources.
Component Library
Design System
I organized the design system in Figma and share it with the whole team, which increased the working efficiency greatly.
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Key learning takeaways from the internship
My internship at SHEIN is truly a precious journey filled with challenges and learnings. Here are some of my key learning takeaways from the internship:
👩💻 Create the “win-win” collaboration:
I learned to efficiently collaborate with others by being mindful of their goals and thinking about what I can do to help them achieve that goal through our collaboration.
🙋♀️ Never be scared to ask questions:
I learned that asking questions is not a sign of weakness. Instead, it is the fastest way to learn and grow.
👑 Proactively seek for critique, but do take a stance:
Though being open to suggestions from different perspectives is significant, I learned to make informative decisions and advocate for them with strong reasonings.