Mothercare PLC
My Mothercare App & Rewards
To register or sign-up to Mothercare club and rewards, users only had two option of how they could achieve this. One was to be in-store and signup over the checkout/tills. The second way was to go online and try and find that specific registration journey.
Users stated it was slow, hard and often pointless. In-store staff, at the time had iPad’s in which they could use to find items, book events (personal shopping, pushchair demos), and to get customers to register with My Mothercare club. The user experience was dated and wasn’t user friendly.
That’s where I and my team were tasked to create a completely new and optimised user experience for the My Mothercare iPad app, and get this out to both users and staff to test, validate and adopt this new experience, enhancing the registration and rewards Mothercare had to offer.
“Being there for parents and their families. Always”.
— Mothercare staff
Role
UX/UI designer, committed to user testing/interviews, working on lo-fi prototypes and mocks, creating user journeys, and empathy maps.
Deadline
3 Months. Launching the iPad app to 40% of stores in Midwestern regions. Rolling out to 100% in 2 months (avg. 48 stores).
Team
Product owner
2 Frontend developers
3 Backend developers
QA Engineer
What problem are we solving?
Problem Statement
My Mothercare is an exclusive club for customers that register for free, and are entitled to receive benefits, advice, promos and rewards before/after parenthood. The current customer journey to register with My Mothercare is too long and complicated - having to commit to register in-store only, or online through a unique URL sent via email.
Objective
To design a new user interface for an iPad application that customers can use to register to My Mothercare in-store. The application will have to be user friendly for both store staff and customers that are willing to register on the iPad versus the website. The interface will be clear and simple to use, featuring large buttons, easy tap options and data fields/forms (focus of accessibility). If the adoption by store staff and customers find this helpful, and we get enough people registered in-store, then the new designs will roll out across the web also.
Strategy
Customers registering to My Mothercare, generates an average of 2-3 million pounds a year. In order to attract, engage and retain customers of My Mothercare, we want to make the sign-up process simple and fast. This is to entice customers and help them to save money by receiving benefits, promos, offers, discounts and exclusive rewards.
The interface must be user centered and be easy to understand for both store staff and customers. Over the next 2-3 months, we will have to conduct customer interviews, go in-store and talk to staff that use the current iPad app, and build an entire new journey.
Overall impact of the product 🎉
~18%
increase in organic traffic logging into My Mothercare account and going to rewards
400+
people registering in the first week of launching
4.2 rating
out of 5 from a CSAT survey based on instore sign-ups
(previously held at 3.6 pre-launch)
Understand
User & Product Fit
Who is the user?
First time/current parents, or adopting
Grandparents are signing up to receive benefits to share with their elder children who are expecting.
Friends of the expecting and/or have children
carer(s)
Other related to those expecting or have children
Where does our product fit in their work or life?
The once users register with My Mothercare club, they are supported with benefits and rewards to help them during their time of pre/post parenthood.
What problems does our product solve?
Reduces stress of signing up at the cash tills or lining up to pay
Offers discounts, offers, promos, and more to help customers save money
Helps parents to register fast in-store
Easy access to start receiving exclusive offers & benefits
When and how is our product used?
Upon launch, it will be used in-store first by store staff - getting store customers to register there and then to start receiving benefits as they shop
Customers can use My Mothercare club rewards either online or in-store
Customers will be taking through a flow that allows them to enter information such as: their name, email, how the users are related to parent or child/children, child or children's names and ages, due date of the baby, standard GDPR and opt-ins
What features are important?
Able to select and choose who the user is i.e. parent, grandparent, friend.
Able to enter the due date or expected date of child - so CRM can target the customer in certain stages of their parenthood or pregnancy and offer advice and support.
Capture child(s) details (upon consent), so we can target parent(s) with exclusive offers, benefit and rewards (following GDPR guidelines)
How should our product look and behave?
It should utilise the current branding of My Mothercare - so we don’t confuse customers
Design with all customer and user groups/segments in mind (store staff, parents, grandparents)
Focusing on accessibility is key. The UI should be big, bold and friendly/playful to the user, with the least information on screen - i.e. big icons, bold colours, and fewer taps to get to the end result (reducing cognitive overload).
Success metrics
01
To have 30% of customers register in-store to My Mothercare, and 50% sign up online within 3 months of launching (12 stores in UK - then roll out to all 75)
02
Customers accrue £250 worth of rewards points within 2 months of registering (depending on avg. customer spend of £50-100)
03
Customers refer at least 3 others to register to My Mothercare with a month
Define
User testing & Personas
We tested the current My Mothercare registration flow with users and store staff, both in-store and online (avg. 16 participants). We wanted to hear from them first hand, and hear their pains/frustrations and goals. By doing this we can understand what it is we need to focus on, whether it be a major part or section(s) of the journey, or a single feature to make it that easier for our customers to register, and simpler for the staff to use.
Customer Empathy Map
Personas
User Story #1
As an expecting parent, I want to find the best offers or promotions on baby items, so that I can save money
User Story #2
As soon-to-be grandparents again, I want to support my family and find suitable products to help in their journey
Customer journey to Mothercare
Having first interviewed a few core customers of Mothercare in-store, and defining our personas, I set out to create what a typical in-store customer experience would look like.
What this basically does, is to define the overall customer experience from getting up in the morning, to driving to the store, and eventually purchasing, signing up, or receiving a benefit from in-store.
This customer journey to a Mothercare store focuses on our prime target customer, we named Lindsey. A 33 year old soon-to be mother for the first time. I created what her typical journey we would be, and then defined that journey in-store, integrating the touch-points and awareness of My Mothercare rewards & benefits along the way.
User journey map
After gathering data from our customers/primary users, and personas, I had to craft a user journey map. This helped us visualise the customer journey of a particular set/group of individuals - in this case Lindsey, who is and expectant mother-to-be, and our primary customer.
This journey map, unlike the customer journey above (which focused primarily on the in-store experience) will highlight the users lifecycle of events and scenarios. It will capture their actions, goals, emotions and pains along their journey, up until they are aware of My Mothercare product/service, and
adopt it.
Ideate
Wireframes, Flows & Designs
As expected in any process - ideation. I began by printing out templated iPad screens on a large A3 page. Using a sharpie and micron pens, I began to sketch in what I think this app should look like and behave, focusing also on good UX, learnt from the journeys and user learnings above.
Next, I turned this sketches into lo-fi mocks on the computer using Sketch App. Applying grayscale colouring to components and a majority of the UI, so that I prioritise the main features/functions and layout of the interface first before any sort of final UI traits.
After, then I began to apply the My Mothercare branding and identity to the app interface, and created a hi-fi user flow, so that in stakeholder meetings, kick-offs, and development mapping/QA, people can see the overall flow of the user experience.
Lastly, I created and defined a simple, yet affective style guide, to help visualise and document all the individual components, icons, and material structures of the interface.
Sketches
Lo-fi iPad designs
User & interaction flow
Final designs
Style guide
Driving for Accessibility
Accessibility was a key driver for the design of the iPad app. We included a ‘preferences’ feature, that housed accessibility options in the iPad app, that would be beneficial for both store staff and customers. The two options were: 1. Language selector - to be a multilingual experience. And 2. to change the sizing of on screen elements - copy, forms, and buttons. We included these two features in a beta release to ensure we enhanced both customer and staff experiences.
We knew at the time, Mothercare attracted a global customer base - having stores all over the country and the world (mainly Europe and Asia), proved beneficial to have a language option. Though, we only launched in English, since other languages’ alphabet was longer to implement in sections of the app, but international teams would soon support this feature after a full U.K. release, on-site and in-store.
Through interviews, testing and data, we found the previous registration journey, hard, confusing and not easy to use. So, with that said, the feature to change the size of the screen elements proved to be extremely helpful. Most of our users were either pregnant mothers, seniors, or parents with children - already going through fatigue, impatience, and emotions. The large, colourful, friendly UI helped with their journey to register.
We managed to register over 400 people in its first week of launching
Outcome
The My Mothercare app was tested at three UK stores. It was well received by both staff and customers, and had positive reviews from in-store surveys. We also saw engagement with offers and rewards in My Mothercare club up by 20%. After these soft launch metrics (1 week after), we launched to all 70 stores in the UK, and online. After a month in, we have had over 2000 people registering, and around 4 in 5 customers using their exclusive rewards and promos online and in-store.
Post launch, we went back to the stores, and setup another CSAT survey for a week - capturing the sign-up satisfaction (previously held at 3.6 out of 5, with 128 responses in a week). We got back 132 results, with a new score of 4.2!
Evaluate
Staff Reviews
My Mothercare Rewards
Here you will find the My Mothercare Rewards pages. I designed three variants. We wanted to test each one, and see what UI gave the best experience, and resonated well with customers.
We wanted customers to find, select, and view the offer in detail. So, a design was needed for the offer description page and FAQ page. The listing offers page would show a secondary navigation, so that customers can tab and select offers that apply to them in their stage of pregnancy (pre-natal, post-natal). The offer description page had more details on the offer, whereby the user can access more information, T&C's and how to claim.
You'll see I started mocking these pages lo-fi (wireframes) then applying the My Mothercare branding to them, and refining the UI and experience.
Original rewards pages
Wireframes (Lo-fi)
Final Designs (Hi-Fi)
Saw a 18% increase in organic traffic logging into My Mothercare account and going to rewards
The rewards page engagement increase from 5% (existing designs) to 12%
Reflection
The My Mothercare app was a unique project to work on. I stepped out of my comfort zone from the office HQ, to meet actual in-store employees and customers at Mothercare stores. I conducted user sessions and interviews with them to get a clear understanding of their pains and frustrations. Designing for such a different demographic and persona, was really challenging, because not only parents and store staff would use the app, but grandparents also. So, I had to make it easy and clear. I designed the UI to incorporate a large interface, with big buttons and controls to avoid frustration. I learnt from user interview, that the use of small components and UI, caused annoyance in the customers behaviour. Parents are going through a lot mentally and physically, so I wanted to avoid too much cognitive overload.
With the rewards pages, again I designed a simple UI, that allowed users to view all their rewards and filter them if needed. The UI cards with images really sold the reward in a visual sense - people were interacting more with rewards accompanied with an image.