Reshaping Instacart's merchandising strategy
project overview
Throughout my tenure at Instacart, I was fortunate enough to be a part of various company-wide design sprints that tackled some of the most important problem spaces for our leadership. This ranged from defining our in-store experience to enabling brand discovery to innovating on how retailers merchandise. The sprints usually consist of 3-5 weeks consisting of collaborating with several design partners and leadership to propose new solutions that we present to senior leadership. One particular sprint that had significant success was the merchandising sprint. This sprint was focused on creating solutions for retailers to stand out and providing a new sense of "freshness" to customers. These proposals would result in a shift in priorities that would be inputted in the product team's roadmap.
The problem we were trying to solve
With the shift to online grocery delivery, Instacart essentially replaces a vibrant, multi-dimensional physical store experience with a two-dimensional online experience. Customers lose that spark of going to the store and retailers don't have the autonomy to express their brand identity. Every store looks and feels the same and the customers aren't inspired to shop.
The goal
The sprint consisted of 4 designers, 1 product manager, 1 brand designer, 1 content designer, and 1 researcher. We all collaborated daily to solve the following themes.
1. Build trust in purchasing fresh foods through sensory elements
2. Curation that tells a mouthwatering story
3. Environment optimized for effortless browsing Ultimately, the team focused on how Instacart can be just as (or more) delightful than going to the store
1. Build trust in purchasing fresh foods through sensory elements
2. Curation that tells a mouthwatering story
3. Environment optimized for effortless browsing Ultimately, the team focused on how Instacart can be just as (or more) delightful than going to the store
Understanding the landscape of retailer merchandising
For the team to grasp the scale and expectations of what a good merchandising experience looks like, the team focused on building empathy and awareness of different strategies across the in-store experience and online.
Empathy exercise
Competitive audit
Exploring mild to wild
The team was encouraged to think broadly for the first week of the sprint. Thinking through different possibilities to show the breadth and depth of what merchandising could look like. We explored unique interactions that visualize a retailer's story. Some wilder ideas started for fun but as we continued iterating, created a compelling experience that resonated with customers and leadership. Some of the more wilder ideas we explored were the following:
Banana slider
Customers get full autonomy over the quality of the fruit they receive.
Curated merchandising experiences
Create an immersive experience that allows retailers to tell their while providing an immersive shopping experience for customers
With the secondary results, the team explored a breadth of options that focused on shoppability vs display. The debate being what's overwhelming vs what is going to drive the best metrics. This was an exciting space as all the content generated in the secondary results would be ai generated.
Revamping the item card experience
Simplifying the item card experience and curating a more organized layout for customers
Final output
Within the weeks of collaborating with the team, we were able to converge and narrow down on a few key themes and ideas to move forward with. My role within the sprint was to focus on the concept of stories and simplifying item cards.
Stories
As the team iterated on stories, there was more and more confidence that the experience would be relevant and compelling. My job was to create a compelling argument to leadership that stories is a concept worth pursuing as the experience benefits retailers, customers, and Instacart.
Retailers have all the content already
Retailers see social media as one of the largest channels to merchandising and many retailers are active in their presence by communicating with their customers digitally. However, we don't offer any solution for retailers to do that in Instacart. It essentially creates an untapped experience where the content is already available to us.
Framing the right narrative
Stories as a concept can scale to several merchandising strategies. For this sprint, the team created a simple framework highlighting how stories can be used in long-form and short-form content.
Store introduction
One of the key problems stories would solve is helping retailers tell their story on Instacart. At it's current state, retailers don't get an opportunity to stand out from the other retailers. Everything looks the same. With stories, retailers can showcase their brand and what they're known for to customers who visit their storefront for the first time.
Window shopping
A secondary approach to stories is the concept of "window shopping" This allows customers to get an in-store view of the produce and meat selection every week. This allows customers to see if anything is appetizing as we are taking them directly to the store.
Item cards
Along with stories, I worked on the item card experience. Item cards are one of the most critical yet complex experiences in the app due to the high engagement on the component. Because item cards are such a key experience, teams across Instacart have added to the experience creating an extremely disorienting and crowded experience for customers.
Our approach to simplification
The sprint team focused specifically on reducing the number of variants and content that goes into an item card. Focusing on reducing the number of item card sizes, and the content that goes into the experience.
Scaling across surfaces
With the proposed item cards in place, we were able to scale the item cards across all surfaces.
takeaways and what's next
This was a massive effort and is widely considered the most successful sprint for the design team. We presented to senior leadership and the work was immediately put on the product team's roadmap. The concept of stories and item cards were both used to present to our larger retailer partners to invest more into Instacart. A massive win and was a great representation of what design can do and how we can influence our product experience
