Slickdeals Shopping Asisstant

main.png
applying_coupons.gif
ddsb.png
 

Stats

  • 0ver 300,000 extension installs

  • 4.6 out of 5 Star rating in Chrome Web Store

 
 

Overview

Slickdeals wanted to enter the Chrome Extension market and compete with the likes of Honey, RetailMeNot, and Ebates. I was tasked with leading the design and research of the project.

The Slickdeals Shopping Assistant allows users to take Slickdeals on the go and access the front page, store deals, and product details page and it’s full functionality in a minified way. We also kept the extension flexible to allow for future features to be added such as Deal Alerts and login and registration in future updates.

In addition to giving the user the ability to access Slickdeals in its entirety from the merchant site, we also gave the user the ability to instantly apply all coupons available for that merchant.

 
 

The Slickdeals Shopping Assistant in context

in_context_animation_02.gif
 
 

The Process and Research

First we began by developing a competitive analysis of what our competitors brought to the table and also to see what avenues in the market we could focus on to incentivize users to download our extension instead of the competitors. Honey dominates the market with 17 million active monthly users. Slickdeals has 12 million active users, so we saw an opportunity to tap into the Chrome Extension market.

 
 
honey.png

What they do well:

  • The leading Chrome Extension for coupon auto apply in the checkout process in the internet.

  • They already have a head start in the coupon application market.

  • Honey has an established reputation and. brand recognition in the coupon market.

  • Offers in-app currency that users can use to redeem gift cards.

  • Offers cash-back rewards.

What they don’t do so well:

  • Not community focused.

  • Coupons don’t work most of the time.

  • No discussion forum.

  • Does not show general product discounts and offers outside of coupons.

 
 
retail me not.png

What they do well:

  • Major brand recognition in the coupon space.

  • Website is the leading performer in the SEO space for coupons. This means they can promote their extension really well through SEO and SEM means.

  • Offers cash-back rewards.

What they don’t do so well:

  • Not community focused.

  • Coupons don’t work most of the time.

  • Does not support Amazon.com.

  • Does not show general product discounts and offers outside of coupons.

  • Their apply all coupons feature doesn’t always trigger when at checkout leading to an inconsistent user experience.

 
 

What they do well:

  • Offers users a lot of cash-back rewards.

  • Allows users to compare different cash-back offers from google search results.

  • Offers coupons to automatically apply when available.

What they don’t do so well:

  • Not community focused.

  • Coupons don’t work most of the time.

  • No discussion forums.

  • Interface is the clunkiest out of the competition.

 
slickdeals.png

What Slickdeals does well:

  • Has a strong and active community of users on the website and mobile app.

  • Discussion forums are prolific and a strong reason why users com to Slickdeals.

  • Offers savings on products and deals, not just coupons.

  • Has partnerships with many third party merchants.

Areas of improvement:

  • Late to the apply coupons at checkout game.

  • Behind competitors in SEO sector.

  • Competitors have a head start in the Chrome Extension sector.

Possible opportunities:

  • Fit and showcase the Deal Details page in browser extension.

  • We can take the community with us when using the extension when browsing the web.

  • We still offer coupons to be applicable while in the checkout process.

  • Allow users to read and comment discussions on deals through the browser extension.

 
 

Brainstorming

We took what we knew were the strengths and weaknesses of our main competitors in the coupons, savings, and extension markets and found an opportunity on how to make our browser extension different from the competition and more appealing to users. We knew that Honey, RetailMeNot, and Ebates already had a head start in the coupons at checkout sector os we needed a compelling reason as to why a user would want to download our extension if and when they already had these other extensions that did basically the same thing.

On top of offering the same functionalities as our competitors, we wanted to highlight the fact that we were the only online deal resource that has a strong community actively using the website. We had a very prolific, active and opinionated discussion section for each deal posted on the site, so we wanted to bring that with us when using the browser extension.

 
 

Discovery

In order to understand what our user needs were, we needed to talk to users, customers, and people in the industry. We conducted a lot of user tests on both the our competitor’s Chrome Extension as well as our own website to see where we could improve and what was working.

Two of the automated user testing platforms we used to conduct some unmoderated tests

Two of the automated user testing platforms we used to conduct some unmoderated tests

 
 

User needs, business goals, and Journey Map

After learning more about ours and our competitor’s user base, we needed to align those needs with our business goals which guided us through the design process.

Frame 2 (6).png
 
 

Design Approach

Do not be disruptive

  • We aspired to not be cumbersome to the user. Extensions have a habit of being annoying and overwhelming to the user. We wanted to make sure to allow the user to not be disturbed when browsing the web while also providing an important function to their shopping experience.

Be informative

  • Slickdeals is a great resource for discount discussions and such, thus we wanted to be able to access that while not being in the website. By adding this feature to the extension, we allowed users to have the most up to date information on a product or sale available in the internet.

Hold their hand

  • The checkout process can already be pretty complicated on its own. We wanted to make sure that the application of coupons was as smooth and easy as a button press with haptic feedback for when a coupon is applied or not.

 
 

User Flow & Wireframes

 
low_fidelity_mocks.png

We tested our mocks frequently to make sure that the user had the optimal experience from a browser extension. The most difficult part was taking the forums from the website and minimizing it to fit into a small factor extension window and still be usable and legible. We tested things like if people rather scroll or click on pagination to read comments. Are tabs better than infinite scrolling? What is the best onboarding experience for the user. And so on.

 
 

Refinement & Testing

After the initial user flow and mocks, we then had to test to see if user experience had an overall positive response. We did numerous user surveys and tests through Validately.com and Usertesting.com as well as taking user feedback via the forums of Slickdeals.net from the beta alpha and beta phases. This helped us identify and address pain points as well as see avenues in which we could generate a better user experience and increase KPIs via the Slickdeals Shopping Assistant (Chrome Extension).

 
 

Outcome

Since its release from alpha, the Slickdeals Shopping Assistant Chrome Extension has garnered more than 300,000 users from the Google Chrome Web Store. Refinement is still necessary to make sure that the extension performs optimally as usability trends evolve over time.