Building a System for Wayfair’s Physical Retail

With the launch of Wayfair’s first four physical retail stores, our tech organization needed to create a system to unify digital products with store patterns to make a seamless customer experience.

My team, Homebase Design System, was tasked to research how all touchpoints converge in stores and build a system that links content, design and technologies.

Challenge

How might we create a system to unify digital products with physical store experiences?

Outcome

A service blueprint that brought together a design system, platforms and accessibility.

My Role

Led Homebase’s project scope, processes, design direction and delivery.

Key Takeaways

Reduced instructional, content, and user inconsistencies by 17%

Background

Wayfair is a furniture and home marketplace which currently offers 14 million items from more than 11,000 global suppliers. After years of continuous feedback from customers, Wayfair wanted to expand to its first brick and mortar store. With about 80% of retail revenue taking place online, Wayfair wanted to create a uniquely winning physical retail experience to meet shoppers where they are.

Wayfair opened its first 3 stores in 2022 and planned to expand to more stores in 2022. With these plans to grow, we needed to make sure digital products and store patterns were consistent for users.

Physical Retail Team Discussions

We met with 12 teams that had the most direct impact on digital platforms and physical customer touchpoints (ie signage, point of sale, etc) to understand what their pain points are. The Homebase team led heuristic review workshops to walk through each part of the journey and learn about their perspectives. From there, we highlighted themes that Homebase could hone in on for improvements.

Goals

Learning from Our Customers

Once we had an understanding of what problems the product teams saw, our next step was to set up time with our users for shop alongs and interviews. Our research goals are to:

  • Understand customer attitudes towards interacting with digital screens in stores

  • Understand customer expectations on different touchpoints and how they overlap with the digital/physical

  • Understand customer perceptions of the store experience

  • Confirm if/how current experiences supports the customer shopping process

  • Identify missing information, opportunities or inconsistencies

Customer Shop Alongs

We shopped at all 3 stores with 5 different customers each (n=15) to learn how they thought about their shopping experiences. Key takeaways were:

  • It is important to have a clear value proposition for the store to set expectations for existing customers.

  • It is important for it to be clear to customers how they can shop the store physically and digitally.

  • It is important for Wayfair to analyze local data to understand local customer segments and needs so we can cater to them.

  • We need to teach store associates about what language and details they should use to be consistent with digital and physical content.

  • Customers expect their journey to be mostly analog in store with digital being a support for extra information or services.

Customer Insights

After we completed the shop alongs, we followed it up with observational research and customer feedback submitted online.

Strategy

Next, we needed to audit how our current tools stack up to the expected customer journey and what steps we need to take for improvement. We determined that we need to meet each customer’s unique needs through a modular, configurable service and design experience that can be tailored across by product teams. This system would evolve with the business, assortment, technology and customer expectation.

Below are some examples of the journey and digital tools audit our team undertook. These examples looked specifically at what touchpoints are necessary during a custom design journey.

Process: High Level Customer Journey

Digital Tools Map

Competitor Audit: General Services

Roadmap

We have the opportunity to integrate digital in a meaningful way. We decided to implement new technologies plus upgrades to the current systems we had in place in different stages. Once a stage was complete or almost complete, we would be being working on the next one.

First

Approach: Establish core retail experiences for large format, inclusive of an omnichannel experience that will offer a variety of digital touchpoints that connect offline to online.

Touchpoints:

  • In store app experience

  • Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs)

  • Shoppable lists

  • Endless aisle screens

  • Design bar space planning

  • Home renovation tools

  • Employee mobile checkout

  • Buy and pickup in store

  • Associate sales tools

Fast Follow

Approach: Apply learnings from the first stage to additional touchpoints and expand offerings like additional browse, checkout and omnichannel fulfillment options to provide more convenience and fluidity between online and offline.

Touchpoints:

  • Buy online and pickup in store

  • Curbside pickup

  • Self checkout (kiosks)

  • Personalized digital store experiences

Future

Approach: Differentiate with new technology far beyond our competition by adding advanced visualization features, personalization and faster checkout options.

Touchpoints:

  • Pattern and color projection for swatches, rugs, wall art, tiles and flooring

  • Augmented vignettes

  • Lifesize 3d imagery

  • Home sudio

  • Optimized checkout

How We Win

Phase 1

Establish a unified repository of design assets, patterns, content strategy and associate talking points about key touchpoints.

Phase 2

Work with product teams to meet table stakes needs and implement new features to differentiate and elevate the moments that matter to our customers.

Phase 1: Creating Repositories for Consitency

Design & Code Assets

Homebase created atomic components, themes, patterns and basic layouts for physical retail teams to use so ensure consistency in visual design.

Content & Language Repository

Homebase built a content and language repository to ensure that all text and associate talking points were consistent.

Phase 2: Elevate Moments That Matter

Endless Aisle

Showcases Wayfair’s endless aisle in ways that personalize, inspire, educate and supplement the tactile nature of in-store shopping.

Homebase and product teams updated the experience to be more than an oversized app by prioritizing content that matters to customers and applying consistent visuals found at checkout.

Elevated Service Experience

Elevates our service experiences through visualization capabilities and project tools to assist with selection and confidence building.

Homebase modified our app library to include service patterns that app product teams could implement. These features enables customers to access store services before or after visiting a store.

3D Room Planning & Product Imagery

Maximizes the effectiveness and reach of our product imagery and assets to enhance in-store visits and omnichannel connection.

Homebase expanded our library to contain 3D assets that could be implemented for room planning and furniture customization purposes.

We Are Never Done

As Wayfair continues to open new stores and our teams learn more about our customers, Homebase will continue to provide new assets, content and guidance to enable our physical retail teams to ship better products faster.