Zola Ratings & Reviews

Summary

During my time at Zola, we integrated product ratings & reviews throughout the our registry experience. In early 2020, I helped launched our MVP by using BazaarVoice (third party partner)’s out-of-box solution. Post-launch, I worked with product managers and software engineers to design and build Phase II, which comprises of a custom review submission form and review hub using BazaarVoice’s API.

Zola

Zola is a mid-size tech start-up in the wedding space, reinventing the wedding registry and planning experience.

My Role

For the MVP (Phase I), I collaborated with another designer, product manager, front-end engineer, back-end engineer, and BazaarVoice’s team to get the out-of-box solution up and running. I then was the lead designer for Phase II, which integrated BazaarVoice’s API to allow for a customized experience.

Problem

Couples wanted unbiased information about products to make a better informed decision about what items to add to their registries.

Though Zola had general company reviews, there were no product reviews throughout the shopping experience; this was forcing couples to look elsewhere for product reviews, including going to our competitor’s platforms, such as Amazon.

Solution

It was time for Zola to integrate ratings and reviews to help drive registry gift adds and better understand our product selection. We decided to partner with BazaarVoice, the leading third party for ratings and reviews.

For our MVP, we decided to use BazaarVoice’s out-of-box experience as it was the quickest option to collect and get reviews up on our site. This option included a templated Post-Interaction Email (PIE) to serve as the entry point for review submission, a multi-submission form to allow for multiple reviews to be submitted in one session, BazaarVoice’s process of reviewing and approving reviews, and a templated PDP and PLP display of reviews on our site.

User Flow

To better understand how everything worked in the out of box solution, I put a quick user flow together:

From here, the other product designer and I divided up the work. I worked on the submission flow, while the other designer determined how the reviews would live on the PDP.

PIE (Post-Interaction Email)

For the post-interaction email (PIE), we used an in-line template where a user would be able to begin a review within the email, and then be taken out to a multi-submission form to finish and submit other reviews.

This would come 21 days after an item ships. To ensure it goes to the person who received the item, we decided on ship date rather than purchase date as the purchaser of the item would often be a wedding guest, not the couple who would be using the item. We chose 21 days based off of BazaarVoice’s best practices, and felt that it was enough time for the couple to use the item before being asked to review it.

In BazaarVoice’s portal, I customized the template with our logo and brand UI elements, and worked with our copywriter to come up with engaging copy:

Though it isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing, this template allowed for the most interaction, which felt crucial as it would be the only entry point to submit a review.

Submission Form Strategy

For the ratings & reviews submission form, we wanted to make sure that the experience and questions correlated with Zola’s wide range of SKUs. We decided to create 2 different for submission form experiences, one for apparel items (eg. bridesmaids dresses), and one for non-apparel items (eg. registry gifts).

To determine what kinds of questions to ask, I conducted some competitive analysis and worked with our merchandising team.

Competitive Analysis

In order to determine what kind of questions to ask for apparel, I conducted a competitive audit to see what information other companies were looking for:

I then compiled all of the questions our competitors were asking in a matrix, to figure out what questions were asked the most frequently. From there, I met with our merchandising team to come up with language and a final list for apparel questions.

As our non-apparel categories were fairly diverse, we decided to keep the questions for non-apparel basic and minimal. I looked at some of the major competitors such as Amazon, Bed, Bath and Beyond, and Target to validate we were asking the right questions.

Form Questions

I customized the questions (language and format) in BazaarVoice’s portal. Below is a snapshot into what the BazaarVoice portal looked like, and what questions we landed on for apparel and non-apparel. It was important to balance useful information, but not asking too many questions where a user would get deterred from filling out the review.

I then tested the submission form to make sure that the correct questions were coming up for the correct categories, and created an excel for the back-end mapping out all of the distinctions to make sure we were matching the corresponding product IDs.

To understand what the user experience would be like in submitting a form, here is a prototype of the multi-submission form experience. I chose to prototype out the apparel experience, as it had more questions.

Launch

The MVP was launched in February 2020 with syndicated content from BazaarVoice.

Problem

As of April 2020, though we had a pretty high open PIE rate of ~25%, our review completion rate was very low at ~2%. We hypothesized that users were overwhelmed by the PIE email and turned off by BazaarVoice’s clunky multi-submission form experience. Along with this, the only way a user could submit a review was via the PIE, and we wanted to provide more ways for couples to submit reviews.

In addition, with BazaarVoice’s out-of-box solution, all of the content related to ratings & reviews was hosted on BazaarVoice’s platform.

API Solution

In order to have more control over the review submission experience, and move the hosting of review submissions from BazaarVoice to our platform, we decided to transition away from BazaarVoice’s out-of-box experience to their API. We created our own custom PIE email, a ratings & reviews hub under account, and a custom submission form.

For this phase, we decided to continue to use the out-of-box solution for the PDP and PLP display.

User Flows

In order to understand the different behavior patterns for receiving gifts and writing reviews from a Zola couple’s perspective, I mapped out different user flows. This helped me understand and prioritize which behavior I would be designing for.

Ideation

After settling on a main flow (receiving all gifts at once), I began ideation for a new design solution. I looked through my previous competitive analysis to get some inspiration, and with the PM began making decisions on what the experience would be.

We decided to create a ratings and reviews hub within the user's account, as there wasn't any place in the experience that had a list of all of the items the user had actually received. Gift Tracker is items only from the user's registry, excluding things they may have purchased for themselves independently, and Orders You've Placed includes things that you may have purchased as a wedding guest and did not actually receive.

Mid-Fi Prototype Usability Test

After sketching out some ideas, I created some mobile wireframes in Figma of what this hub would look like.

We then decided to test this mobile mid-fi prototype, to get feedback on the designs. We testing with 6 users on usertesting.com. Overall, the feedback was very positive, and made some adjustments around the submission confirmation.

Entry Points

In order to determine where the entry points to the review hub would be, I sent out a survey to recently married or engaged Zola employees asking where they would expect to be able to write a rating and review. Overwhelmingly, people said Gift Tracker or on the item PDP. We decided to put a link to write a review in Gift Tracker, but not include an access point on the PDP as it would be very complicated on the backend with verifying customers.

Finalizing Designs

After iterating based off of the usability test and entry point test, I then created high-fidelity mock-ups in mobile, tablet and desktop breakpoints.

Handoff

After presenting the finalized designs to stakeholders, I determined all of the different sates and use cases. I then packaged all of the assets, uploaded the mock-ups to Zeplin, and met with the engineering team to go over the experience.

During the build process, I conducted design QA and worked closely with the development team.

Launch

This second phase was launched in May 2020.

Next Steps

• Create a custom PDP review display
• Look at the analytics and interview couples to better understand what types of information they are looking for in reviews
• Collaborate with other product teams to see how we can leverage ratings and reviews for Zola-specific products like invitations and paper