BACKGROUND.

Bloomingdale’s partnered up with Borderfree to open up their online store to 200 countries worldwide. Although their checkout process is optimized for US consumers, they needed help to create a checkout experience that is easy to use for international consumers.

THE ASK.

To create a checkout experience that is usable for consumers in over 200 countries.

MY ROLE.

I worked on the wireframes, front-end designs, and experience design for this project.

MY PROCESS.

Before wireframes, I benchmarked the current checkout experience with other best-in-class sites. The most successful checkouts allow users to choose to check out as guests or members. There were opposing theories on whether a one-page checkout is a better experience or if a multi-step checkout is preferable. In the case of a one-page checkout, seeing too many fields at once can overwhelm consumers and cause cart abandonment. In the case of multi-step, the time it takes a page to load the next step could also deter impatient shoppers.

I opted for a hybrid of the two. All the fields would live on one page. However, users would only see one step at a time. The form would be smart enough to perform in-line validation and allow users to proceed to the next step once the information is supplied correctly. Fields for steps would load via ajax without requiring additional page loads.

The same checkout would serve as the experience across over 200 countries. However, every country has different usability standards. There are cultural nuances that also have to be observed. For instance, in Asian countries, the surname is usually written first and the given name is written after the surname. This is contrary to western countries where a given name is also a first name and a surname is the last name. Email is the dominant form of contact but in China, most people ignore their emails but are used to receiving texts as order confirmation.

Besides cultural nuances, addresses are different from country to country. American zip codes are typically 5 numbers. The postal code for other countries can include a variation of alphanumeric characters. While validating values is crucial, it also needs to be smart enough to allow for flexibility.

Many countries are much more advanced than the US with their use of mobile devices as well. The check out form needed to be designed with a mobile-first mentality. I approached this assignment by first, determining the most common denominator. What would a one size fits most form look like? From there, I took 5 major regions and noted the variations that needed to occur in the form to make it feel native for consumers in that country.

I went on to create several iterations of the wireframes and proceeded to design the experience. We conducted usability texting with several users from major countries and continued to iterate on the design. I worked closely with front-end developers to ensure that the experience of the form would be a slick rather than jarring experience. i.e. New steps should grow and expand rather than pop in. There should be loading spinners if the ajax required loading time.

THE RESULT.

Bloomingdale’s checkout experience delighted global consumers. International sales boosted since the launch of the new international checkout form and continues to grow year over year.