Effective & Efficient

Subscriptions

The Costco Subscriptions feature enhances the online shopping experience by allowing users to set up recurring orders for essential items, ensuring hassle-free home delivery and convenience.

Background

Costco's business is growing day by day with a very loyal customer base. With a good number of warehouse locations, they are able to serve a huge population with different age groups, ethnicities, and preferences. With the emerging trend of online shopping, Costco is getting tough competition in the online market with giant companies like Amazon, Walmart etc. This is where we are introducing a new feature, ‘Subscriptions,’ to Costco’s online website. Customers will be able to set up a recurring order of regularly needed items and enjoy home delivery. This will not give customers a hassle-free experience but also save time. At the same time, Costco as a business will benefit from this as they will have a committed number of orders in hand so that they can negotiate with their suppliers for better prices. It will also bring down the over crowding into the warehouses, providing a better shopping experience to the customers and reduced load to the employees.

Role : UI/UX Designer Tools : Figma, FigJam Time Line : 6 Weeks

Design Process

An iterative design process is followed during this project. Regular feedback was collected and changes were implemented

Secondary Research & Competitive Analysis

Studied Costco business and some SWOT analysis reports available. Also conducted research for some competitors for Costco, what all their advantages. Is there any place where Costco can improve. Based on this research created provisional persona of a Costco customer. This was the point where I found where Costco can improve, ‘Subscriptions’. This is the missing piece of the puzzle.

Affinity Map

Designed affinity map after conducting user interviews. It was very helpful to derive the key insights . It also surfaced some problem areas. It was very clear that customers were willing to order the items online but at the same time there was a fear of revenue loss for Costco due to customers not visiting warehouse.

User Interview Synthesis

5 people were interviewed to find out their experience and expectations shopping with Costco. From the interview we can conclud that Costco has very loyal customer base who appreciates the products offered at very reasonable price. Everyone reported some common concerns such as-

  • Costco is very crowded, and long waits in checkout lines

  • Struggle to find parking spots.

  • Costco's website offers a lot more variety of products than the warehouse and order bulky items such as furniture online to receive home delivery

    Overall everyone loved the idea of online subscription for regularly needed items which can address all these concerns and moreover it will be mutually beneficial for both Costco as a business and their customers.

Personas

These personas are based on insights from Costco’s existing customers and stakeholders, with a primary focus on understanding the users' mental model. The personas highlight Costco's clear intent to strengthen its online presence while addressing the needs of customers who prefer online shopping, ensuring the business retains and caters to this growing segment.

Stakeholder

My goal is to enhance Costco's online presence, ensuring it remains competitive and stands out among competitors.

Busy Customer

I want to shop at Costco as quickly as possible, and having home delivery would be the perfect bonus.

Health Conscious Customer

Having Costco's organic produce delivered right to my doorstep would be a dream come true.

Task Flows

These task flow gives a high level idea about how the solution will be implemented. Main user flows can be visualized.

Low fidelity wireframes were run through few users and they understood the flow very quickly. One suggestion received was place subscription section on right hand side section above delivery details, as rest other applications have it placed there. But at this point we are not considering the request, as want to come up with solution with minimalistic changes to existing syste.

Low Fidelity Wireframes

Branding

Costco's branding elements, including their color palette and logos, are used for this work. However, I noticed some inconsistencies in their color tones, which, while subtle and not immediately noticeable to the eye, could impact overall brand uniformity. Some of the icons I have to design from scratch for completion.

High Fidelity Wireframes

Item details page

This is the page where users can select the subscription option for the item. They can also specify the quantity. And when they add such an item to cart and place order their subscription will be setup.

Add to cart confirmation

Once you select the add to cart button on the item details page above this confirmation popup will be displayed and it will indicate the subscription quantity and frequency.

Cart details

This is the cart where your selected item will be displayed with the subscription quantity and frequency. This is one more place where you can still update quantity or frequency before placing the order.

Account Home

The account home page will display the option to visit the subscriptions page.

Your subscriptions

Under the account section, user can see all the option to visit subscriptions page. this page will list all the subscriptions you have set up previously. This is where they can update subscription quantity or frequency. Cancel a subscription also can be found here.

Usability testing

There were 8 participants in usability testing. All were regular Costco shoppers, mainly online. As everyone was very well aware of the Costco application. Not much context was given to the users before testing to check if they understood what and how to do it.  What exactly is the subscription was explained to the users at the beginning of the session. Three main tasks were tested –

1.    Setup Subscription 

2.    Cancel subscription.

3.    Edit/Update subscription

Goals

  • To see if the subscription feature is intuitive enough for users.

  • To see how fast they can set up a subscription.

Success Factors

  • Users are able to complete all assigned tasks, without any help

  • Users can complete each task in less than 2 seconds.

Feedback collected

Everyone found the application very simple and intuitive. They were able to understand and find the things with ease. All of them appreciated the idea of setting a subscription for regularly needed items. They all believed that it will definitely save them lot of time and no need to create shopping lists of finished items to shop. They will no longer face the inconvenience, when they found the most needed item is finished.

  • Love the idea of setting a subscription for everyday household items and receiving delivery hassle-free.

  • They will appreciate it if the items are priced the same as the warehouse and ready to pay an extra delivery charge. 

  • They liked the flexibility of fine-tuning the subscription frequency or quantity over the period

  • All believed that this would save them a lot of time and hassle, specifically no waiting in huge checkout lines in the warehouse. And no driving around in the parking lot of Costco to find parking spot.

  • One suggestion received was, it will be great if they can setup online subscription and pickup in store to save delivery charges.

  • They found all screens very familiar and no drastic change in the UI look, though new feature has been added.

  • Another request received was, he will love to see the subscribe section near checkout section on the right side, on item details page. This is because other applications such as ‘Amazon’ has     designed it that way. And he is used to find subscription option in that location. 

Future Enhancements

The Subscription feature is just a basic idea that has been implemented here. But there is a lot more that can be built on top of this idea to provide more benefits to users as well as Costco's business. These are some enhancements -

  • Add reminder alert emails/ messages about scheduled item delivery.

  • Depending on the existing list of subscribed items, suggest other items that can be subscribed for.

  • Design personalized offers/discounts depending on subscription history.

  • Add pickup in-store feature.

  • Add a way to create a new group 

Thank You!

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