Case Study: Woolworths Journey Map

 

How can Woolworths continuously improve it’s digital capabilities to grow consumer adoption of digital channels?

Earlier this year, I was brought onto our consumer team to help identify opportunities and reimagine the Woolworths customer journey. This was a side project that came out of the team’s passion for the customer and growth sector.

Background Research.

To begin, we started by understanding where Woolworths is currently sitting by pulling insights from the IBIS World Grocery Report 2020.

Fig. 1: Expected Growth (%)

Fig. 2: Total Australian Grocery Market

Looking at Woolworth’s current digital landscape, we understood that in F21 Q3 Woolworths has:

  • Obtained +1.5m e-commerce customers

  • 90.5% Increase in eCommerce sales since Q3 2020

  • 47.7% YoY growth of average weekly traffic growth

Furthermore, the projected growth of digital channels is going to be 5x the amount of physical channels (Reference Fig. 1).

Competitor Research.

To understand any areas of opportunities and gaps that Woolworths may have, we did an in depth analysis of grocery retailers globally.

Areas of Opportunity

Onboarding

Simplification of the onboarding process, and providing more incentives for users to sign up.

Promotions & Savings

Being able to offer competitive pricing and promote better loyalty rewards.

Convenience

Reducing the time it takes to shop, creating a seamless user experience.

 

Gamification

Activate user interest through interactive online shopping experiences.

Tech Innovation

Integration with emerging technologies such as AI and for insights and home assistants.

Personalisation

Understand user preferences and tailor search and results to individuals.

Customer Persona.

Let’s bring our focus to one persona:

“I can’t leave the baby alone at home, I also don’t have time or energy to shop”
 

Name: Sarah Pearson

Age: 33 years old

Goal:

To find a convenient and flexible way to buy my groceries so that I can get on with caring for my newborn.

Bio:

  • First time mother

  • Lives with partner

  • Moderate Technology user

  • Lives in outer metro major Australian City, 20 minute drive from shops

Habits

  • Shops once per week

  • Shops at her local Woolies store

  • Never shopped online

  • Cooks occasionally

Pain points:

  • Difficult to shop with a baby, pram and all the items

  • Reduced salary and parental leave - on a budget

  • Online shopping is confusing

  • Sharing Responsibilities - little support as primary carer

  • Tired and time poor

  • Lots of bulky items (nappies, baby formula etc.)

Opportunities:

  • Guided buying of products

  • Easy to add and cook recipes

  • Better savings

  • Convenience

  • Consolidated shopping lists

Future State Journey Map.

In the journey map, we looked at a ‘typical’ online grocery shopping journey, from the trigger, to onboarding, research, selection, transaction through to delivery and post-transaction. We categorised all the opportunities we have identified through our research and investigated pain points and happy moments of our persona at each stage.

 

Low fidelity prototype:

With the user journey, we chose 3 of the opportunities to focus on, the trigger, onboarding and also a new browsing experience. For these mockups we wanted to just simplify the flow for someone like Sarah who hasn’t shopped for groceries online. It has a guided process inspired by the likes of hello fresh, where the sign up is a stepped process and there are no distractions.

We saw that In a buggy did a shop by aisle and a 3d virtual store , we thought this was a super fun and interactive way to shop and can bridge the gap between online and in store. It also helps with those people who struggle to find things online, all the products are exactly where they would be in store.

Trigger.

 

Opportunities:

  • Competitive incentives

  • Bridge the gap between physical and online

Actions:

  1. Sarah is a everyday rewards member and she recently shopped in store at woolies, she actually realises that there’s an offer for 1 month free delivery and 10% off her first order when she shops online.

  2. She goes home and puts this receipt on her fridge. . .. few days later she’s running low on supplies. So she scans the receipt and she’s taken to the Woolies onboarding page.

 

Onboarding.

 

Opportunities:

  • Sign up with rewards membership or Social media accounts

  • Easily accessible online support

  • Customised preferences

Actions:

  1. Because Sarah has scanned her everyday rewards card in store, the system recognises this and her card imported. It’s not linked to any online account so she can choose to create an account or link an existing account. She can also choose to skip this and just go straight to shopping if she wishes to checkout as a guest.

  2. She chooses to create an account and it takes her to the account creation page. She enters an email and creates a password and she signs up.

  3. She is then taken to a page where she is asked a series of questions about her shopping habits and any dietary requirements. This information would be used to tailor her search results when she shops in the future.

  4. She then clicks next and because she scanned her receipt earlier, the products that she purchased in store actually shows up here and she can choose to reorder these.

  5. She checks a few of them and clicks ‘get 10% off’ to claim her offer.

  6. She is taken to the final page where it says ‘ Congrats Sarah, you’ve unlocked your 30 days of free delivery and 10% off your first order’, there’s also a few different options for her to start shopping.

 

Browsing.

 

Opportunities:

  • Virtual shopping experience

  • Two level navigation

Actions:

  1. Sarah chooses to go to the virtual store because it sounds really interesting, she’s taken to a Birdseye navigation view of the store. This floorplan is something that Sarah is familiar with because its very similar to the layout of her local woolies.

  2. Sarah clicks on the frozen aisle because she wants to purchase some spring rolls, she is brought to this interactive view similar to google maps street view.

  3. She walks through the aisle and clicks on the products she sees in the fridge, The descriptions pop up and she can flick through to see the products next to it in this aisle and add them to her cart

  4. If she wants to see a list of all the products here, she can click on the shop aisle button in the bottom right to see a normal listing of all the frozen food products.

  5. She can then continue shopping, browse the rest of the website and then checkout.