Mission

Party City is the largest retailer of party goods in the U.S. The highest performing product category is balloons, with 80% of users including at least one balloon in their order. Their goal was to improve balloon product ratings by streamlining the purchasing process and pickup experience.

My Contributions

As the principal UX Designer, I was responsible for researching user pain points and redesigning the balloon experience across the entire site. The redesign (1) decreased total shopping time by automatically setting helium inflation as the default option and selecting the nearest pickup store using geo-location, (2) added balloon education to prevent user errors, and (3) eliminated redundancy by moving balloon scheduling options to the end of the flow.

Impact

After the redesign, we saw a 78% click reduction to purchase a balloon and an improved star rating score for latex balloons by 20%.

Client

Party City | Pleasanton, CA

Services

• User Interface Design

• User Experience Design

• Webflow Development

• User Experience Strategy

• User Research

• Wireframing

THE PROCESS - STEP 2

The Solution

Goal: shorten the balloon flow and educate users at key touchpoints to give them the optimal experience

We wanted to create designs that would:

• Reduce the number of steps required to add a balloon to cart

• Help users choose the correct day to pick up balloons

• Explain how to transport and care for balloons

• Reduce balloon-related errors when switching shopping methods

The redesigned flow featured only 2 clicks to add to cart, as opposed to the old flow, which required 9.

To reduce the click effort to add a balloon to cart, we first condensed all the actions a user had to take from 5 to 2 screens, reducing the number of clicks by 78%.

Automation for store and inflation selection reduced repetitive steps.

We redesigned key features on both the add-to-cart-modal and the product detail page to automate as much of the balloon shopping process as possible. First, we automatically set our users’ pickup store using geolocation data from their IP address. Secondly, we created inflation swatches so that users could easily toggle between helium-inflated versus non-inflated balloons. If a customer opted for helium inflation, we prevented them from making a user error by deactivating standard shipping (since they could not receive inflated balloons in a shipping parcel). And lastly, to reduce repetitive steps, we appended a cookie to their shopping session that would apply their pickup store and inflation selection to all future balloons.

Moving pickup scheduling to checkout enabled users to perform the task only once for all the balloons in their order.

In the old flow, users had to interact with 3 screens to schedule a balloon pickup. To streamline the process, we condensed all the actions onto one screen and then moved this screen to Checkout so that pickup scheduling would only have to be done once for all the balloons in cart.

Balloon education, instructions, and pickup calendar helped to manage user expectations.

To minimize errors and ensure that balloons came as expected, we inserted educational content where users scheduled balloon pickup.

1. Balloon scheduling instructions - to inform users to schedule balloon pickup on the same day as their celebration

2. Vehicle capacity message - to prime users to pick up their balloons with an appropriately-sized vehicle (or plan for multiple trips)

3. Assembly instructions - to make sure balloons were arranged as users envisioned

4. Balloon pickup calendar and time slots - to prevent mistakes during scheduling (i.e. during store closures) and help store associates with order priority

Adding balloon care tips reminded customers about proper balloon pickup and storage.

We decided to add balloon care tips to the order confirmation and pickup notification email to remind users to protect their balloons during transit and at their party. We also included troubleshooting and safety information to help users if they experienced problems.