253-2536101_bed-bath-and-beyond-logo-icon-vector-hd.png

Improving the Bed Bath and Beyond Ecommerce Shopping Experience

About Bed Bath and Beyond

Bed Bath & Beyond, Inc. engages in the operation of retail stores and retails domestics merchandise and home furnishings. Its products include domestic merchandise and home furnishings such as bed linens and related items, bath items, kitchen textiles kitchen and tabletop items, fine tabletop, basic house wares, general home

 

The Problem

How might we make it easier for users to shop for home goods products on the Bed Bath & Beyond e-commerce site?

 

The Challenge

The high level goals were to …

  1. Conduct a heuristic evaluation of the Bed Bath and Beyond website.

  2. Uncover key areas to improve usability.

 

My Role

I was the sole UX/UI designer on the project. I conducted the entire design process from research, to analysis, concept design, validation, prototyping and testing. I wanted to challenge the way this website was designed and create an easier experience.

 

Client Individual Project

Timeline Four Weeks

Sector E-commerce

 

Design Toolkit

 
design toolkilt.jpg

Heuristic Evaluation

To identify issues, and increase the usability of the site, I conducted a heuristic evaluation of BedBathandBeyond.com.

undraw_the_search_s0xf.png
heuristic-eval.png

Heuristic Evaluation Findings

After evaluating the website, I determined that the product selection feature presents a clear usability issue.

Criteria: Consistency and standards/ Error Prevention

Score: 3 (needs improvement)

The user cannot “add to cart” unless they have selected options (color/size) first, however these options are small and towards the bottom of the page. The user will click “add to cart” but cannot checkout and will be redirected back to choose options before moving on to the checkout.

I do not think this works well for the user because it is leading to an error to begin with. By making the product page less crowded and showing clear options for the user we can increase the usability of the site.

 

 

Competitive Analysis

For inspiration on how to improve this feature, I found this example from audi.com. They used large visual thumbnails and preselected options.

A similar feature could be useful to improve the BedBath and Beyond website because this would make it clear to the user the options they need to select before checking out.


Next, I sketched out a few possible solutions to improve the usability of this feature.

Out of the sketches, I decided to go forward with the highlighted sketch to make this feature more usable.

I believe that this works best for the user because it is showing large visual thumbnails, pre-selected options, and all sections being broken up into different areas.


  • Before

    I do not think this works well for the user because visually they are separated, there is no indication that you have to select one of the options before checking out. Items will show color already and user may not know they have to select a different color.

  • After

    By using large visual thumbnails, and pre-selected options the product selection feature becomes simple to use. The user knows which options are already selected and can simply “Add to cart” or change the option if they want a different style.