Westfield Shopping App

Westfield at your fingertips

Westfield wanted to connect with its visitors through a digital experience that would help guide visitors in our centers and allow us to present them with relevant content, enhancing the shopping experience. Through user research and market data, we were able to create the Westfield Shopping app. Since its initial launch, we have successfully integrated account and indoor positioning features. Now, with over a year of being out in the wild, we have some strong data to help iterate upcoming versions.

Project Goals

  • Increase customer engagement and collect user data

  • Provide a native solution for our mall directory and routing platform

  • Create a digital presence cohesive to our brand and web products

  • Integrate ticketless parking feature, UK

  • Define and implement Google Material Design patterns on our Android platform

Role and Responsibilities

  • Senior UX/UI Designer

  • Collaborated with a team of designers, engineers and product managers here in the US, Brazil, and in the UK on a daily basis, in an Agile environment

  • Conducted user research, data analysis, and A/B testing

  • Created native app pattern libraries and UI kits cohesive to the brand for iOS and Android

  • Produced interactive prototypes for new interaction concepts and user flows

  • Created sketches, wireframes, and documentation throughout the process

How we worked together

The team was based on the Squad model, where you have high level players from every discipline together on a close team. We had weekly sprints, daily stand-ups, and tracked progress in JIRA. At the start of a project,  we had initial guidance from our center markets for product features and priorities. We then would assess requests and provide guidance on next steps/solutions. We would begin the sprint with a retro from the last sprint and tie up any loose ends. Stories and time estimates were then created against work tickets and we would begin the actual work. Based on the sprint goals, I would work closely with engineering (sitting right next to them), or with engineering and design for collaboration. We found that getting engineering involved from the very beginning is an absolute must.

Daily stand ups, sometimes working from a robot!

Daily stand ups, sometimes working from a robot!

On boarding flow sketches - Used for ideation and initial communication

Format for communicating to product team - Account creation flow

Zeplin - Used to communicate with Engineering

iOS UI Kit - All elements are symbols, type has set styles, and components are scalable

Visual studies I created to explore branding implementation - Conducted experience workshop with stakeholders. Designs were communicated with our global regions

Account creation or sign in flow

Iteration on Home Screen based on feedback from in-center visitors

 

What do visitors “Like”?

We needed to understand what users preferences were and we introduced a “like” tagging system for account holders. Users would be able to tap a heart that corresponds to a product, a retailer, or an event. This would allow us to add valuable data to our visitor profile, making recommendations more relevant and ultimately enabling us to understanding our users more.

Hearts or Stars? What does a “like” mean? Is it for saving, following, or expressing interest? We did research on what users expect when tapping either a star, heart, or save button. They both represent tagging something that they like and want to save for later. We considered using both, one for preferences and one for saved events. We found that users did not really make this distinction but assumed that we were going to use the saved items to tailor their experience. We decided to only use the heart icon and simplify the interaction.

Tapping the heart:

  1. Save the item to the users favorites list.

  2. We identify the retailer, type of item, color, material, etc to build a profile

  3. Flag specific item to present to user if retailer has a special

  4. We capture location, time of day, and other usage metrics.

Personalization

We provided access to the users favorites via the home page in the app. We did this to create awareness of the section. We want to see how much users access this section to help guide any UI/UX updates that may be required.

  • More clear selection on home screen

  • Added Favorites section at top link group

  • Ability to add promotional content in quick links for higher call out

  • Recommended/What’s new section for Liked items and similar items they liked before

 

Example of the Event Detail page evolution

Detail Page Update

Along with the Home Screen update, we wanted to make sure we scaled some of the updated language in other important parts of the app.

  • Updated leveraging new iOS design patterns

  • Hierarchy and presentation of details less cluttered and easier to read

  • Way-finding access closer to the top of the page

  • Structure applied to all event detail pages and retailer detail pages

 

Prototypes of some of the interactions

Loading_screen_perspective.gif

Prototype for the app loading screen

tiles_loading_home_screen2.gif

Prototype for an earlier version of the Home Screen

So, what happened?

We launched 4 apps for 75 malls, across 4 countries, US, UK, AU, and NZ. Successfully integrated our new api's and data management system. Center markets will have the ability to curate content on the app in an easy, scalable way - Something that was not possible on older versions. Since it's release, we have been tracking user behavior and have found some really interesting data. Some of which confirms our assumptions, and some that can really help reshape the digital products at Westfield.

Some key insights

  • iOS and Android users differ quite significantly in behavior when using our app. A large demographic difference was clear based on usage. iOS users showed to be more brand affiliated.

  • Visitors to our centers have modes that they operate by. One persona can morph into another combination of personas based on day, time, and location.

  • We underestimated the potential for features tailored towards families.

Stats in first 3 months

  • ~300 Downloads in first few days and ~20K downloads in first few months

  • ~5K Accounts created

  • ~180K stores, events, or specials saved to “Likes”

  • +34% increased engagement over last version

Actions taken so far

  • Revamped UI on Android app to better serve Android users while maintaining feature parity across both platforms

  • Conceptualizing 'modes' in the app. Weekday vs. Weekend, Morning vs. Afternoon, etc...

  • Conducting user research to better understand the needs of families in our centers. So far, in the UK, stroller rental is a great candidate for an easily accessible feature in our app. More to come...

Other westfield CASE STUDIES

Integrating Express Parking® feature

Learn how the ticketless parking feature was conceptualized and integrated into the existing app.

Huge drop off after tapping 'Stores'

I run you through how we solved the huge drop off after users would tap the number 1 tapped link.