Save Cars
Adding the ability to save cars on DriveTime.com so customers can go back to their favorite finds.
DriveTime
Project Overview
Role
UX/UI Design
Team
1 manager, 1 product analyst, 1 UX designer, 1 content specialist, 1 graphic designer
Tools
Adobe XD, Miro, Microsoft Teams
Challenge
When browsing cars on Drivetime.com, customers do not have a way to save which cars they liked and want to come back to.
Solution
Provide a visible and straightforward way for customers to save cars they are interested in and can get back to.
Project Background
Many of DriveTime’s competitors as well as other shopping experiences on the web include a feature, usually in the form of a bookmark or heart icon, where users can save the products they are browsing so they can come back to them later.
This was something that DriveTime.com was lacking. We had this long inventory of cars with no way for users to save something that might’ve interested them. We wanted to launch an experiment where we introduce this concept and see if it improves our metrics and the shopping experience of our Vehicle Search Results (VSR) page. This would also give our customers a more interactive experience and us the opportunity to collect data on customer demand by vehicle type. In this first phase, Save Cars would be a mobile-only experience that if successful, would then be translated onto tablet and desktop environments.
I was the main designer on this project. It was an exciting opportunity to introduce an entirely new interaction on DriveTime’s website and an additional page for these saved cars to be stored.
Results
The Save Cars functionality that was tested had no impact on global metrics other than a minor lift in return user sessions.
While there was no movement on global KPIs, the team felt that due to the great signal of intent that was provided by Save Cars (STS was 3.3% for those that saved cars compared to a global STS of .3%) we should implement and expand on the Save Cars functionality in future experiments.
What I Learned
User flowing brings out the details that can otherwise be missed. The original ask sounded simple, but user flowing became an essential part of this feature because of all the moving pieces involved, including other experiments that were running at the time.
Developers need more than just static visuals. Two major parts of functionality came up in this project, and it was a good reminder that as designers it’s important to think through all the tiny details of how something should be animating after an interaction rather than falling under the assumption that the developer just knows.
Lacking any major impact in numbers doesn’t mean it’s a bad experience. This experiment didn’t exactly do much for us in the sense that numbers were drastically shifted around, however it didn’t have a negative impact on our metrics either. The decision was still made to implement this feature because it’s an experience that can add a lot of value when we do have account creation on our site, and is usually expected in places where you’re shopping online.
Tax Season Email
Prototyped in Adobe XD
