The Home Depot
Subscription Suggestions Feature Case Study
I bought a washing machine from The Home Depot’s website. Not many loads of laundry after installation, it began asking me to perform a cleaning cycle with a product we didn’t have on hand. I drove to The Home Depot store, purchased the product, and continued the laundry.
This got me thinking about recurring accessory purchases. Why didn’t The Home Depot’s website let us know about the cleaning product? It knew about our appliance purchase, after all.
Come to think of it, we also received notices from our refrigerator that it wants us to replace the water filter for the ice maker. This is clearly a problem I have. Turns out, The Home Depot has a subscription service for each that I wasn’t aware of. This set me on a mission to find out why.
My Role: Service Design Researcher and UX Designer (Solo Project)
Duration: 96 hours over 4 weeks
Tools Used: Figma, Figjam, Zoom (with Fathom), Google Forms, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word
Year: 2023
Disclaimer: I do not work for The Home Depot. This case study is an exploratory learning experience that was not underwritten by The Home Depot. The views in this case study are solely my own. My approach is reliant on assumptions of their business goals and my personal research findings for the sole purposes of this project and its time limitations.
Ideally, I'd be working with The Home Depot’s team and have direct access to their resources to guide my work.
Introduction
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Problem
I can’t keep track of when I need to replace parts like water filters!
Poor communication of subscriptions for user-replaceable items (example: water filters for refrigerators) on The Home Depot’s website mean missed opportunities to convert product sales into subscriptions.
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Solution
A new suggestions feature to recommend relevant subscription products based upon the user’s order history and saved list entries.
Consistent promotion and branding for the existing subscription service eligibility across product pages, saved lists and the shopping cart.
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Impact
Compared to review of the current The Home Depot website, testers for these new features reported being:
84% more aware of the existing subscription service program
116% more likely to consider using the existing subscription service program
Found the existing program 66% easier to use through increased discoverability
Discover
The Home Depot, Lowe's, Amazon, Walmart & Target
I decided to search for the same product - a refrigerator that had a built-in water dispenser - on each website. The intent was to knowingly look for an appliance with a component (water filter) requiring replacement on a regular basis. This way, I could see what the user experience was for each case.
Both Lowe’s and The Home Depot sold the refrigerator and carried the same water filter, but Lowe’s provided a more consistent subscription user discovery experience from the product page to the shopping cart. The Home Depot had gaps: for example, subscription options showed up on the product page, but not in the shopping cart.
Neither site, however, featured subscription services on their homepage or suggested subscriptions from saved lists. This was a strategic opportunity to improve the user experience beyond Lowe’s offering.
Unsurprisingly, Amazon, Target and Walmart all were less effective at original product search, but Amazon offered a more consistent overall promotion of its subscription services on its homepage.
Survey of shopper habits
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I tried to classify what constituted “major” without limiting it to only appliances. This may have been a mistake on my part.
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This was encouraging because it meant the habit was already formed and the benefits known even without knowledge of the subscription program.
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This was promising, because The Home Depot already offered eligible subscription products with those terms. However, it was clear that people weren’t aware the program existed.
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Yikes! Nowhere to go but up, I suppose. This told me that I wasn’t hitting the audience I needed to reach with this survey and needed to perform one directly towards shoppers of The Home Depot and Lowe’s.
Amazon.com was by far the most popular place to shop online, but my review of the website for the refrigerator/filter combination showed that users needed to know what they were looking for prior to searching for the water filter. It was more of a firehose of information.
The number of survey respondents open to the idea of a subscription service was encouraging, but I now needed to narrow down my focus to see if that still held true when asking self-identified customers of Home Depot or Lowe’s.
Since both stores had an online and physical presence, I wanted to learn if variation between shoppers for each venue existed. The website would leverage purchase history better than an in-store experience unless the in-store purchase could be tied to an online account.
I also wanted to ask the same subscription questions to see if there was a measurable difference from the more generalist original survey.
Lowe’s and The Home Depot shopper habits
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This was a promising statistic that I was reaching my intended audience, unlike my prior survey.
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Respondents voted nearly identical answers for Lowe’s, so considering it the closest model for subscription services is reasonable.
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Less than the prior data set, but not bad. The terms of a discount and free shipping is consistent with the existing subscription program, so awareness is the main challenge.
Appliance purchase numbers from physical stores and the website indicated each was an important component of the purchase process.
It was reasonable to assume that some of the appliance purchases may begin with online research and then the user would travel to the store to see the appliance in-person prior to purchase.
Because I was able to receive feedback from a high percentage of respondents with both website and in-store shopping experiences, I felt as though my data was reliable enough to move forward.
Define
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Both surveys reported a majority of respondents were willing to consider signing up for product subscription services.
How might we better inform new and existing users of the existing Home Depot subscription program?
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The Home Depot does not consistently label or promote products with subscription programs on its website or on its shopping cart page.
How might we create a consistent level of information about subscription services across the entire user journey?
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It's reasonable to assume a majority of users buying major appliances will perform online research first and visit a store in person.
How might we leverage existing user product research and purchase history to suggest appropriate subscription products for them?
Designing with new customers and existing appliance owners in mind
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Proto-persona Dylan
Dylan is a new appliance customer and represents a good opportunity to instill good purchase maintenance habits and knowledge about replacement parts (such as a water filter for a new refrigerator.)
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Proto-persona Mark
Mark represents an existing customer who would benefit from better knowledge of what parts are available for their prior purchases. If purchased at The Home Depot, there would be an order history that could possibly be leveraged.
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Dylan's journey
Digital natives like Dylan can’t imagine making a major purchase such as an appliance without online research, so setting the table with a comprehensive information experience, starting with the product page, makes sense.
Dylan needs to be encouraged to save her online research into a list independent of a shopping cart so that when she goes to the store, it will be accessible for her in-person review of appliances and retain all of the information that she has collected.
Once at the store, Dylan can confidently inspect the appliance in-person and not be at the mercy of the salesperson’s knowledge about product features or accessory items. She will also have a good understanding of all of the steps for her purchase, such as subscription programs and delivery options and old appliance removal.
By being part of the information suggested right alongside with the appliance, a subscription service add-on is expected to be a likelier purchase to make than it would otherwise.
Develop
Ideation Guiding Principles
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Because this only a feature addition, the existing design system for The Home Depot will be retained.
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Persistent reinforcement opportunities for the promotion of the existing subscription program must be identified.
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Leveraging the existing user information that The Home Depot already has collected will yield the greatest value.
Site Navigation
Review of the existing site showed there was a very scattershot approach to promotion of the existing product subscription program. Despite having a dedicated Subscriptions landing page, its only link on the home page was a text link in the site’s footer.
One of the easiest first decisions was to add ‘Subscriptions’ to the site header as a persistent item across all pages.
Taking the persona of Dylan through the journey of researching for a refrigerator and associated water filter, saving it to a list, and then having a second flow where it is transferred from saved list to shopping cart identified the relevant existing pages to receive improvements.
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No mention of Subscriptions except in the site footer.
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Items showing up in algorithmically generated sections have no indication of being subscription-eligible. They are only available as add to cart.
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A subscription option panel is visible, but any other mention of the product only gives you an option to add it to the cart.
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No mention of subscription programs, only an add-to-cart button.
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Items do not have a subscription option shown, which is disappointing given that this is the last chance available for a conversion.
Subscription Iconography
Low-fidelity improvement ideas for existing pages
High-fidelity development and implementation of existing pages
The new ‘Suggestions’ feature
Deliver
Usability Testing and Benchmarking
My approach towards testing for this project was:
An initial review of the existing site through the sequence of pages identified by the task flow;
A second review with the revised pages.
The intent was to establish the baseline values on a scale of 1-10 and then be able to compare that to the revised versions.
(1 = not at all; 10 = very)
A value of 7 was determined to represent Minimum Viable Product.
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Do you use any product subscription services? If so, where and for what.
How would you rate your awareness of The Home Depot subscription services for specific products? (1-10)
How would you rate the likelihood that you would use The Home Depot for subscription services? (1-10)
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Based on the content on this page, how would you rate the user friendliness to find information for The Home Depot subscription services? (1-10)
FOR NEW FEATURES:
Do you find this feature conveniently located?(y/n)
Do you find this feature helpful? (y/n)
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Based on the content on this page, how would you rate the user friendliness for finding accessories for the refrigerator? (1-10)
Based on the content on this page, how would you rate the user friendliness for The Home Depot subscription services? (1-10)
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Based on the content on this page, how would you rate the user friendliness for The Home Depot subscription services? (1-10)
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Based on the content on this page, how would you rate the user friendliness for The Home Depot subscription services? (1-10)
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Do you find this feature conveniently located? (y/n)
Do you find this feature helpful? (y/n)
Icon helpful? (y/n)
Based on the content on this page, how would you rate the user friendliness for The Home Depot subscription services? (1-10)
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Based on the content on this page, how would you rate the user friendliness for The Home Depot subscription services? (1-10)
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Based on this sequence, how would you rate your awareness of The Home Depot subscription services? (1-10)
How easy does it seem to be to use The Home Depot subscription services? (1-10)
How would you rate the likelihood that you would use The Home Depot for subscription services? (1-10)
Test Results
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New Suggestions Feature Page
MVP: 7
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Average across all existing pages
Original: 1.9
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Awareness of Subscription Program
Original score: 4.25
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Ease of use for Subscription Program
Original Score: 5.25
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Likelihood of using Subscription Program
Original Score: 3 (>2x the original)
Testing Feedback
Although the proposed Suggestions feature page exceeded the MVP value, users provided valuable improvement feedback:
There was debate as to whether the suggestions feature should be just for subscriptions or would suggest non-subscription items. If it was to be just subscriptions, some felt it should be labeled as ‘Subscription Suggestions.’
Multiple users remarked upon the visual hierarchy of the suggestions page not being easy to follow due to spacing between sections. It was not apparent that some items went together.
The multiple titles for each was confusing.
Multiple users did not like the ‘checkbox’ interface that had been adopted from the original My Lists page design.
While the icons were considered very helpful in many contexts, their placement was debated because of their relationship to other design elements such as the ‘heart’ to add an item to a List. This is an area that would receive additional study that is beyond the scope of this project.
The Home Depot’s website is a jumble of content and it is very hard to focus on any single thing on product pages or the home page. This makes it difficult to promote subscription services without having it become one of the rotating hero images.
Revisions to the ‘Subscription Suggestions’ feature
Reflections
What would be future improvements to this project?
I would want to have a formal retest of the revised Suggestions page.
The comments about the Subscriptions icon and its locations relative to other elements associated with a picture need further investigation.
Multiple people commented on how busy the homepage looked and it made it difficult to focus on anything but the hero graphic. There are bigger problems here that need attention and directly affect some of the effectiveness of this design work.
What did I learn?
I probably took on a little more than I expected with this project.
The original idea started to send me down a rabbit hole because the subscriptions angle was so fragmented in the existing site. I didn’t realize this until I got pretty far into the analysis, and by that time I was too committed to the idea to set it aside.
Needing to do a second round of surveys definitely knocked me off my axis for this project and prolonged it more than it should have been, but I’m overall happy with the results.
Simple inclusion of consistent messaging about subscription services increased the user friendliness of existing pages substantially (in some cases as much as 8x the prior version) and increased the tested user’s likelihood of using Home Depot’s subscription services by 2x. For the amount of effort, this was a win.