In 2018, Kroger’s expansion from traditional brick & mortar supermarket chain to digital marketplace came full circle as all of the ways to shop merged into one single platform: Kroger.com and the Kroger mobile app. Customers could now order for store pickup, home delivery or shop a broader assortment of items to be shipped to their homes. With more optionality came new challenges in how and when to communicate fulfillment options to customers. In order to help customers navigate this new landscape, fulfillment options were heavily communicated and required a selection before starting shopping.

My role

opportunity: removing fulfillment selection from the home screen would simplify shopping and allow customers to focus on finding products

initial research

Where do customers expect to make fulfillment decisions?

Because of the large scope of this exploration, I first set out to validate my hypothesis through a series of user surveys and click tests, totaling 600 participants, to gauge general expectations and decision making patterns around fulfillment. The largest takeaway was that without a strong visual signal, customers assumed A. they're shopping how they normally do, and B. fulfillment decisions would be handled in cart/checkout.

initial solution

The research validated that customers are often not looking to declare fulfillment decisions upon arrival to the home screen, which encouraged me to proceed with moving this information to a less prominent location. The proposed update would remove the invasive fulfillment selector from home screen, and instead replace with subtle location indicator (necessary for assortment control).

Complication: a domino effect

Reducing emphasis upfront would require experience changes throughout the journey to help guide customers to delay fulfillment decisions until they’ve finished building their cart. This led to gathering PD's from each of the affected product teams to collaborate on a holistic solution.

Moderated Testing

Through collaboration across several product spaces, I led the charge in creating a high-fidelity prototype that allowed participants to navigate through a realistic shopping journey with minimal mention of fulfillment types until the end when they would review their cart. This prototype was used in 10 60-minute, 1:1 moderated sessions in which participants were interviewed about their general grocery and ecommerce habits, and then completed several tasks as we observed their behavior, expectations and pain-points within the flow.

Findings & Next Steps

1. Customers did not notice or miss the existing fulfillment indicators throughout the experience

2. Cart was an appreciated place to consider fulfillment options

3. Additional discovery around assortment and cart experience needed to ensure smooth transition

Final Solution: A Phased Approach

Phase 1: Create new fulfillment selection flow to allow for new placement within header and address smaller issues

Phase One