Soojin Cha
Shopify

Retail Point of Sale (POS) Discounts

Aims to empower users to utilize admin-defined discounts by offering flexibility and reduce custom discount usage.

  • Shipped: 2024

Background

  • While discounts are used in more than 25% of total POS transactions, its feature set does not meet our target users' business operation needs.
  • The feature limitations lead store staff to use manual workarounds that increase the risk of human errors and untracked discount exploitations

Central Design Goals

  • Visibility

  • Speed

  • Control

My Role

  • Developed product directions and scope development with product and tech leads
  • Conducted user research to prioritize improvement areas based on user needs and ran usability testing for validation
  • Worked closely with product, development, data and product marketing teams throughout the project
  • Created user flows and worked on UI/UX design and finalization

Check-out system & pricing strategy

Draw solutions by anchoring the UX approach to user challenges and problems

Approach solutions from the lens of the check-out system rather than the discount feature alone

Check-out system and pricing strategy

User interviews

Usability testing participants

  • 8 retail businesses
  • Industries: Apparel, jewelry, footwear and home bedding
  • Operation / store managers + Store staff feedback

Findings

Challenges and feedback

  • Dependency on manual discounts
  • Human errors
  • Employee discount exploitation
  • Less control
  • Want more information on applied discounts
  • Want less manual work: Faster to apply discounts

Personas

User personas

What users want

What users want

1. Visibility

  • Upfront discount details empower staff to move to the next step of checkout with confidence
  • Access to all applied discounts in one place
Upfront discount details
All applied discounts in one place

2. Speed

  • Restructuring legacy discount IA that hinders users
  • A stand-alone discount code entry point and increases its discoverability and usage
  • Data-informed product optimization
Restructured discount information architecture
Faster discount application

Store managers update their staff every morning and write down or print discount codes. This improvement streamlines discount code access

Standalone discount entry point
Printed discount codes replaced by a discount code entry screen

3. Control

  • Restructuring legacy discount IA that hinders users
  • A stand-alone discount code entry point and increases its discoverability and usage
  • Data-informed product optimization
Discount controls

4. Validation

Two tester groups

  • General population | 10 participants: Represent temp/new staff
  • POS user | 10 participants

Results

  • 100% All tasks completed
  • Usability feedback: Easy or Very easy
A/B testing

Post-launch assessment

  • 45% Reduction on custom discount
  • 72% Adoption on multiple admin-defined discount
  • The manual override of automatic discount has been reduced by 81%. 2,725,650 taps reduced per month
Discounts in the cart total
Next: Ownr