Project
Great Deals Store
Role
UX Design Lead, UI Designer & Dev Manager
Period
2018
What began as a print-out eventually became the Great Deals Store and the foundation of many web content campaigns.
Revenue Generated
$90M+
Load Time Improvement
50%+
Team Productivity
Significantly Increased
Gallery
01
Digital Transformation
From print coupons to dynamic digital commerce
Put Away the Scissors
Originally, the Great Deals page was a simple landing page with a handful of manually curated deals and categories updated weekly. Customers were expected to print out the page and use the coupon at a store. Eventually, it was linked to a promotion on site, but it was a limited manual process.
The Initial Plan
The concept of the Great Deals Store was simple: showcase weekly deals in a convenient location. However, the actual experience and how it was generated was complex. This initial wireframe sketch kicked off the direction of the overall page layout, product cards, and data structures.
Lo-Fi Wireframes
These low-fidelity wireframes were for a later iteration of the Great Deals Store. They promoted a clean and simple interface that could be themed for both Toys"R"Us and Babies"R"Us brands.
02
Behind the Interface
Designing systems and workflows for scale
Cross Functional Design
The Great Deals Store was an important part of the Toys"R"Us and Babies"R"Us ecommerce strategies. In addition to designing the front-end user experience, I designed the cross-functional team workflow to simplify and streamline the process to make it easier for everyone to successfully setup and launch this weekly experience.
Merchandising teams would create spreadsheets of sales data that would then be passed onto our Web Operations team. They would then curate the data and hand it off to the Web Development team to format and publish live on site.
Great Deals Code Base
The original code base was built with standard HTML, CSS, and Javascript and used JSON data to dynamically build the experience. The original print and clip page took over 6 seconds to initially load and over 12 seconds to load completely. To increase performance and optimize the experience, I adjusted the UX and code so that the initial interface would load in under a second and be ready for the user to explore in under 3 seconds.
Creating Data
Talented colleagues on the development team created a backend tool to automate the manual process of creating the JSON data from spreadsheets. They integrated my store engine so that our cross-functional team members could edit their data and see it render in real-time. I worked on enhancing the UX for that tool in parallel to the actual application.
Instructions Included
I created presentations, manuals, documents, and an internal website to support the creation and usage of the Great Deals Stores for both technical and non-technical team members. These educational materials helped everyone understand exactly how and why things worked the way they did. They also gave everyone confidence in using the applications and responding to any issues throughout the pipeline.
03
Faster, Better, Stronger
Creating an optimized and reusable experience
Get the Goods
Easy to navigate, fast to load, and completely reusable. The Great Deals Store engine was then ported to other experiences to make deals easily accessible to customers.
On the Go
The entire Great Deals Store was completely responsive, so customers could access the same great deals on any device.
04
Results & Impact
Measurable success through transformation
The Great Deals Store transformed a simple print-and-clip promotion into a dynamic digital commerce engine that became foundational to the Toys"R"Us and Babies"R"Us ecommerce strategy. The application generated significant revenue while improving team workflows and customer experience.
Revenue Generated
90M+
Created an application that generated well over $90 million in sales each season
Performance Improvement
50%+
Reduced initial load time from 6+ seconds to under 1 second
Team Productivity
100%
Introduced an improved cross-functional team workflow that significantly increased productivity
05
What I'd Do Next
Opportunities for future iteration
Looking back on this project, there are several areas I would explore further given the opportunity:
- Advanced Personalization: Implement machine learning to surface deals based on browsing history and purchase patterns, creating a more tailored experience for each customer.
- Real-time Inventory Integration: Connect the Great Deals Store directly to inventory systems to show real-time availability and prevent customer disappointment from out-of-stock items.
- A/B Testing Framework: Build systematic testing capabilities to continuously optimize layout, messaging, and product positioning based on conversion data.
- Enhanced Mobile Experience: Develop native app integrations and push notifications to alert customers when new deals matching their interests become available.
- Analytics Dashboard: Create comprehensive dashboards for merchandising teams to see deal performance in real-time and make data-driven decisions about promotions.