What I made:

A new checkout process that decreased cart abandonment by 33%.

Before

Hornblower cruises had a cart abandonment rate of 90%. The original ask was to create an abandonment email campaign.

The opportunity

I didn’t believe that an email campaign was the right way to go. Our checkout process required customers to create an account, which we made a tedious process. After doing that, they went through a 12 page checkout process.

With some excellent strategic storytelling skills, I pitched our leadership to put together a team to redesign the entire checkout process.

My role

  • I advocated for this project to address the root of the problem.

  • With no budget for research, I spent time in coffee shops and coworking spaces leading unofficial research sessions. I also conducted internal interviews as part of my discovery.

  • Mapped out, and wrote copy for, a new flow that addressed all core problems found during discovery.

  • Added an opportunity for us to upsell during checkout.

  • As a scrappy team, I also served as a product manager on this project.

This project was part of a larger redesign initiative. If you’d like to see more of my work with Hornblower, check out the following links:
Website redesign App launch Brand guide Product rewrite

During

With user recordings, I was able to see that we lost most of our customers at the very start when they were required to create an account. From there, I conducted interviews with users as well as our sales managers to see what an ideal checkout process would look like for them. Users were most concerned about including any specific needs (dietary, disability, etc) and seeing the full price upfront. Our sales managers wanted customers to add on packages during the checkout process. Both sides mentioned a way to manage reservations.

I determined the key problems we needed to solve were:

  1. The site required customers to create an account before beginning checkout

  2. There was no way to upgrade with a package or specify dietary needs

  3. Customer couldn’t see the total price until the very end

This was solved with a revised checkout process that included:

  1. From there, we revised the checkout process to include:

  2. No account required to purchase or manage reservations

  3. Dedicated section for dietary needs, special occasions, any disabilities

  4. Ability to include package add-ons

  5. Price featured alongside checkout with up-to-date cost, including all fees.

Results

  • Following the website launch, we saw a 30% increase in online sales

  • Within the first three months, there was a decrease in cart abandonment from 90% to 63%.

  • By the time I left the company, the app was averaging $2,000 in revenue per day.

  • Our customer call center saw a 52% decrease in calls relating to our products and checkout.
    What I learned

What I learned

This is not the most glamorous project I worked on. It’s also from 2019! And to top it off, there are a lot of things I’d change today. So why do I put it in my portfolio? Because this was supposed to be a cart abandonment email campaign and I was was able to get leadership buy-in on a complete redesign. I’m proud of that! It’s also what you get with me as a member of your team—someone who is always digging for the right solution, not just the easy one.

Previous
Previous

Expedia | Chatbot

Next
Next

Expedia | Portfolio framework