E-commerce Monetization

Monetization offers advertisers the opportunity to enhance product visibility through personalized and strategic placements across Kroger's website and app, designed to engage and inspire shoppers throughout their journey.

To ensure a balanced approach that aligns user and business needs, we consulted advertisers beforehand to incorporate their perspectives into our strategy.

The study aimed to:

Assess the current state of Kroger’s e-commerce experience, particularly regarding ads on the search results page.
Identify new opportunities for improvement and innovation.
Test and evaluate new ad formats to enhance user engagement and satisfaction.

Summary

Briefing

Research Question
How can Kroger leverage paid onsite placements to deliver a valuable and engaging experience for its customers?

Objective
Observe, analyze, and uncover insights into user behavior within Kroger's e-commerce platform.

Goals

Gain a deep understanding of the intent behind eCommerce customer behavior
Identify the challenges and pain points faced by eCommerce customers
Analyze areas of high and low performance to optimize overall effectiveness
Explore shoppers' preferred methods for brands to present and showcase their offerings

Methods

• Discovery session

• Research Plan

• Moderated Study

• Interviews

• Unmoderated Study in UserZoom

• Usability test

• Working Sessionns

• Share Out

• Ideation sessions

Research Impact

• Considering the participants' feedback, it is clear that there are opportunities for improvement to enhance the customer's paid experience

• Through targeted research, we successfully increased clicks from $5 million to $7 million, demonstrating significant growth

• Incorporated research findings into the company culture to drive continuous improvement and alignment with organizational goals

Step-by-step process, flexible and agile

My Roles

UX Researcher
Design Lead

Tools

Confluence
Jira
Figma
Figjam
Slack

My Learnings

The majority of customers visit the search page with a specific item in mind
Currently, customers tend to overlook banner ads during their shopping journey, as they do not perceive them as integral to the experience
Many participants expressed frustration with unrelated products appearing in the top search results, finding them confusing and disruptive to their shopping process

Considerations

How might we encourage users to interact with ads more frequently by providing personalized and engaging content?
How might we display complementary products in a way that adds value to the shopping experience without confusing or annoying the consumer?
How might we organize and present inspirational content in a way that resonates with and inspires the consumer?
How might we deliver better ads by improving their content, size, and placement to align with shopper expectations and preferences?

Prototypes