Case study #2— Designing Flipp’s Item share feature.

About Flipp

Flipp is a digital flyer and coupon app in Canada and the U.S. Flipp enables users to view digital flyers from various stores, clip items to shopping lists and browse digital coupons.

Overview

Flipp’s item sharing feature was riddled with problems. It was a legacy implementation that did not deep link into the app. It was extremely difficult to understand and consume the information presented. The goal was to improve this into an actionable and meaningful experience for the user which was contextual to their location.

Problem definition

This project was part of Flipp’s Growth Hack mission-based team (Squad). One of the KPIs for the team was to acquire new users, onboard and activate them. Improving the item sharing experience was key to getting new users.

• How might we drive app installs from an item share?
• How might we deliver an experience that makes sense for users who receive expired content?
• How might we deliver an experience that makes sense for users who receive content that is not available in their FSA (postal code)?
• How might we match the content that is outside a users FSA to content that is available in their FSA?
• How might we drive an EV (engaged visit) from an item view on Flipp.com?
• How might we demonstrate the value of Flipp for non-Flipp item share recipients?

Assumptions

• We believe that by making it easy to share content, users will share more frequently which will drive an increase in new user acquisition.
• Users want to share item-level deal content with their friends and family.
• Users prefer to share using a “share” button vs taking a screenshot.
• We can fit a share button in both the min and maximized item details drawer.
• Recipients can understand the value of Flipp when they see an item details page.

Some Facts and Risks

• Under 1% of users are sharing content today.
• Customers can only share flyer items today.
• We are unable to match items that are outside a users FSA to items that are available there
• We are not able to drive a meaningful increase in organic install.
• Users who receive a share do not open it.
• Users who receive a share do not convert into a Flipp app user.
• We don’t currently drive an EV from an item view on Flipp.com
• The retailer has a dark week in the recipient’s FSA — No new content or flyer for that week.

Existing flow — Item share

Explorations: High fidelity wireframes

Based on the inputs, assumptions and constraints I designed the initial flow which comprised of the happy flow, all the edge cases, states.

Whiteboarding user flow, possibilities, constraints, questions.

Case 1: Both the sharer and the recipient are in the same postal code and the product is available in the area

Case 2: Sharer and Recipient are in a different area.

Since the sharer and recipient are in a different area, there is a possibility that the pricing may be different. A lot of deals were local to a specific geographical location/store. Allowing users to find local pricing for the product allowed continuity in the experience.

Constraints

Since this was a net new feature, the capability was unknown. We wanted to design for an ideal experience and scale down from there to build an MVP based on what we could do. We soon learnt that updating the pricing would require new capabilities which were currently not accessible.

We scaled down the design and simplified the flow.

• Users who belonged to the same location as the sharer would still get the same experience.
• Users who were outside sharer’s area would be able to search for the product in their area.
• The search would be based on 3 factors — Same product from the same store, same product from different stores, similar products in the area.

Iteration

Case 3: Recipient is not a Flipp user.

We wanted to get users who are not Flipp users to download the Flipp app. Deep-link would open the product once the app was installed.

Next Steps

After freezing scope for the MVP, the next steps were to user test this flow to validate the designs. Unfortunately, I got laid-off the following morning. We couldn’t bring this design project to a conclusion but the team was excited about it and I hope this project gets through.