Sumegha Mantri

Online Product Return Experience — LaPrairie

Background & Project brief

La Prairie is a high-end Swiss luxury skincare brand with a global presence.

In addition to boutique stores all over the world, customers can also purchase products online. However, till now, customers wanting to return products could do so only in-store or by filling out the physical return form that came along with the package. This project is the expansion of the existing e-commerce capabilities of the brand to include an online product return functionality.

The Team

The team comprised of a Project Manager, Business Analyst, Service Designers, UX Designer & Visual Designers.

My Role

As the UX designer on the project, my role was primarily collaborating with the Service designers to flesh out the service design blueprint; followed by translating the insights from the service design blueprint into customer journeys (workflows) and subsequent wireframes. Feedback from the client was continually incorporated and the final wireframes were later skinned by the visual designers to match the overall brand language.

Constraints

Since the new online return experience was to be embedded into the existing e-commerce website, it had to embrace the multiple legacy design patterns that came along with the context.

An online return functionality did not exist and had to be built from scratch for this project. This meant building an understanding of how the business operated and what background activities orchestrated to bring this online return experience to life.

All the details were captured in a service design blueprint (above). The horizontal axis maps the steps of the customer journey in the return process and the vertical axis maps all cogs and wheels (people, processes, policies and technologies) that make the journey possible.

This holistic view of the return process formed the basis on which the experience was fleshed out in wireframes (below).

1 — Returns Landing Page: Selection

A customer can come here from any of the entry points into the return process

- From the order in the 'My Account' section
- Scanning the QR code that came with the packaging
- Return Link in the email that contained the invoice
- FAQ or the Return link in the site footer

2 — Reasons for Return

Capturing the reason for return and further details around it.

Selecting a reason opens up a relevant field for further details based on the reason selected.

3 — Shipping Details

This section lets the customer choose their preferred method of return. Since the method of returns varied by geography, the section had to have different location-specific versions, one is shown below.

4 — Confirmation

This section summarizes the choices and content of the previous section, letting the customer do a final check before confirming.

As a next step, these wireframes were skinned by the visual designer to match the language of the existing brand website and adapted for mobile as well.

Concluding Thoughts

Looking back, while the customer journey drew on the depth of insights from the service design blueprint, the scope of the project did not allow for testing the experience before launching - which though not optimal, is alright for the context because the rate of returns is very low and the experience will be iteratively improved upon as time passes and feedback trickles in.