INSTACART

LEAD DESIGNER • NEW USER EXPERIENCE

a focused and structured approach

one of the challenges with introducing instacart to new first time users is explaining how the service works.

this feature aims to help orient users & get them to value. i identified three milestones to address the growth opportunity & measured success through number of orders placed.

the milestones helped us define what success looks like.

each milestone has a product goal, clear actions we wanted our customers to take.

we used the milestone framework to measure against our top-line metrics such as number of new accounts created & time spent for new users.

sign up

showing value early on helped us learn more info & ultimately business from customers.

the first thing we asked for was a zip code & we explained why (so that we could populate the site with relevant stores in the area). to make it super easy, we opted to auto-populate zip codes & reduce friction.

cart building

we learned from data that consistent returning customers found items they wanted & added to them to cart within a short time frame of logging in.

we concluded that if we helped customers build a cart of key items, they’d be more likely to check out. additionally, the search experience was critical to reduce product overload & suggestive search pills helped customers find relevant items quickly.

checkout

the goal here was to simplify & group info together, making it easy to process what’s happening & ultimately build trust.

for first time customers, referrals became an additional lever for growth. if customers were satisfied with their first visit, it became an opportune time to ask for referrals & store credit. this combo led to powerful gains in new accounts created.

learnings

growth projects are inherently experimental & nuanced by nature. As a result, many variations were tested to understand the incremental impact to our top-line metrics.

growth projects are like growth irl, complex & necessary to yield learnings that enable us to iterate thoughtfully.