People have time-consuming and disorganized shopping experiences online since they have to keep track of multiple shopping carts and accounts. Spree is a consolidated shopping cart plug-in that helps users add items from any website, creating a personalized and organized shopping experience.
BACKGROUNDAs a participant of the Google x Techstars Startup Weekend Event, I pitched my idea and was selected as one of the 6 business ideas to be further developed. After three days of ideation and development, we presented to a panel of judges and the Spree team was awarded 2nd place.
Understanding the Problem
While shopping online, I often times go back and forth from one tab to another to compare items and find the product that I want to purchase. Because I shop on multiple websites, I had too many tabs, emails, and accounts that I had to keep track of.
After talking to my friends about my shopping experience, I realized that we all had similar struggles. We go on multiple websites to compare our options and deals, leading to a more time consuming and disorganized shopping experience. To fix this problem, I started to wonder if there would be a way to optimize the shopping experience.
How can we create an organized, time-efficient, and personalized shopping experience?
Research
We created a survey and sent it out to 20 USC students to identify common problems that people face while shopping online.
User Personas
I created user personas to further understand our user base and pain points to design a solution around it.
Jennifer, 21 Jennifer is a college student who loves to shop. She is a very picky shopper, so she shops on multiple online stores to compare prices, reviews, and deals. Because of having too many tabs, she has a difficult time keeping track of the items that she's interested in buying. To spend less time on shopping, she wants to find a way to have a more organized and time-efficient shopping experience.
Dan, 52
Dan is a father of two daughters. Because he has been defrauded, he is very cautious about his purchases online. He also has a difficult time trusting smaller online retailers. To lower the chances of becoming scammed in the future, he is looking for a way to verify online purchases with smaller stores and keep track of his purchases.
Objectives
Spree helps users to have a more personalized, organized, and time-efficient shopping experience by allowing users to compare items and checkout from a consolidated shopping cart and keeping trackof their shopping expenses.
We also aim to partner with smaller vendors toverify purchases and drive business for them by building credibility through Spree's verification system.
User Journey
Instead of filling out personal information multiple times and having numerous shopping carts, Spree removes repetitive steps and allows users to compare items in one cart and checkout in one click.
Main Features
1. Shop on Any Online Store Without having multiple tabs open, users can shop on any online store by simply adding items to Spree's consolidated shopping cart.
Using filters, users can compare items based on price, brands, and categories.
2. Have Access to a Detailed Budget Analysis of Your Shopping Expenses
Rather than focusing on all expenses, we specifically focus on your shopping spendings.
We analyze your spending habits by recording them in detailed shopping categories, such as Beauty, Home & Furniture, Clothing, and more.
3. Save Money through Our Reward System Once you purchase items through Spree, you receive Spree points that can be used in future purchases.
Ideation Process
Whiteboarding
Sketches
Moving Forward
After presenting to a panel of judges, we received feedback that we could further develop our product by adding a comparison feature where users can compare items side by side. Another suggestion was to show various deals related to the item, so users could have access to the best possible deals. Overall, the valuable insight from the judges and identification of pain points have helped us think about further ways to improve Spree.
Through this project, I realized that it's important to not only consider the design but also the technical aspects when developing a product. Because most online stores require customers to sign up before checking out, our business would face technical difficulties in creating a consolidated shopping cart that allows users to checkout in one-click. We would have to partner with big online stores, so we could allow Spree users to create an account that would work across all online stores.
Key Takeaways
Challenges are difficult, but rewarding
Consider not only design, but also technical aspects when developing a product
Refer back to user's needs to further improve product
