Modernizing the Starbucks Digital Gifting experience
As a Senior Product Designer, I led an end-to-end initiative to modernize the Digital Gifting ecosystem at Starbucks. This included designing and launching 3 new Gift features on the Starbucks App and Website, and updating the existing Email Gifting experience.
NEW FEATURE 1
Shareable Links
Send digital Starbucks Gift Cards (aka eGifts) to anyone you’d like, through any messaging platform, using a link.
Launched in Fall 2023 on the Starbucks app.
NEW FEATURE 2
eGift History
View your eGift order, self-troubleshoot, send/resend your eGift, and find information to contact support if needed.
Launched in Fall/Winter 2023 on the Starbucks App and Website.
UPDATED FEATURE
Email Gifting update
Don’t want to send the gift yourself? Enter your recipient’s email address and Starbucks will do the heavy lifting for you.
Launched in Fall 2023 on the Starbucks App and Website.
NEW FEATURE 3 (CO-LED)
Group Gifting
Effortlessly send up to 10 eGift cards per order on the Starbucks Gift page — no more needing to create multiple orders.
Launched in Fall 2023 on the Starbucks Website.
Project overview
My role: Senior Product Designer
Project duration: September 2023 - January 2024
Type of project: Product Design, UX/UI, App Design, Website Design
Platforms launched on: iOS, Android, Web
My responsibilities: Product Design leadership (point person for our Research and Design team, led product strategy and timelines in close partnership with our Product Manager), wireframes, UX / UI, visual design, prototype creation with Figma, led presentations and reviews, assisted in planning generative and validation research, design and a11y specs, complex Figma file organization + collaboration with Jira and Confluence
Team members
Immediate team: 1 Senior Product Designer, 1 Product Designer, 1 UX Researcher, 1 Product Manager
Collaborated with: Engineering (iOS, Android, Web), external vendor (Black Hawk Network), Starbucks Card Business, Brand, Marketing Communications, Marketing Research and Insights, etc.
Context
The Starbucks Card Business Team had ran 2 Human Centered Design studies in 2020 and 2022, where they identified huge customer pain points and desires for digital Gifting.
In 2022, Starbucks had also brought on a new CEO. He came with a strategy for the company that included fostering human connection and scaling our digital experiences.
The previous Digital Gifting experience on the Starbucks App and Website had remained the same for around 5 years, lacking notable updates since its debut. It was limiting, caused anxiety and drop-off, and lacked real-time human connection.
Gifting is also a huge business pillar of Starbucks, with its digital sector growing in significance as our overall digital ecosystem maintains its ever-growing position as a core part of the company.
It was time for an uplift.
Gathering previous research, data, competitive analysis, etc.
Being new to the Gifting space, I set out to learn as much as I could about the Gifting business. I talked to different teams to figure out their wants and hopes for Gifting, analyzed past Gifting research and data, created a competitive analysis, and worked with my team to identify pain points and opportunities.
Identifying paint points and opportunities
I did an audit of the entire Gift experience, both physical (in-stores) and digital, and for both Senders and Recipients. From there, along with other collected information, I was able to identify the following…
Pain points (includes but not limited to):
Senders usually did not know the email addresses of their recipient (outdated contact method)
Senders were not confident that their eGift was being delivered to the right person
Senders had to create multiple eGift orders in succession in order to send multiple eGifts, causing frustration
A large percentage of eGift customers thought the existing eGift experience could be improved, suggesting the ability to send an eGift via text or social media as a desired enhancement
Confusing support information was provided - e.g. not indicating which contact number was for Senders vs. Recipients
Our digital touch points had different ways of referring to digital gifting, causing confusion - bulk gifting, digital gifting, eGift, starbucks gift card, etc.
Opportunities (includes but not limited to):
Provide a more modern and intuitive way to digitally send eGifts
Provide a way for customers to send multiple eGifts at once
Provide clearer information about an eGift order straight through the app and websites themselves
Tie the physical and digital eGift experiences together more closely
Modernize other parts of the eGift ecosystem (including iMessage gifting)
Defining our target audience
Through research and data, we identified multiple types of gift senders:
Casual — your everyday Starbucks customer, wants to send gift cards to their friends and family.
Formal — teachers and colleagues, wants to send gift cards to people in their workplace.
Corporate — companies / corporate figureheads, wants to bulk-send gift cards to a large number of people in their company.
We defined casual and formal as our focus for this initiative.
Defining problem statements
Customer problem — The mobile and web Gifting experience restricts customers to sending eGifts through an email address, which is outdated and confusing. Gift Senders either (1) don’t know their Recipient’s email address, (2) lack confidence in the Sending experience due low gift status visibility, or (3) are uncertain if the correct Recipient is receiving the gift. The Sending experience is also impersonal, providing no direct interaction between Sender and Recipient.
Business problem — As a result, there is drop-off in the purchase flow and untapped potential in activation volume.
Partner problem — It also causes burden on our Partners at the Customer Call Center, with 57% of gift-related calls being redirected to our vendor BlackHawk Network, all relating to eGift order and delivery issues.
Defining our goals*
Overall customer goal
Enable customers to send an eGift to their recipient however they’d like, and to more than one recipient at a time - aligning with their current lifestyles, gift gifting behaviors, and frequently used messaging channels.
Provide more transparency and clarity on the status of their eGift order to ease their anxiety and instill confidence within their gift sending experience.
Enable real-time Recipient feedback.
Overall business goal
Grow the digital card business and enable a more modern, intuitive gifting experience.
Increase activation volume and order conversion.
Overall partner goal (aka Starbucks employees)
Maintain or reduce the number of gift-related calls to the Customer Call Center by providing ways for customers to self-troubleshoot or easily find information about their order.
Brainstorming and concepting
We then moved on to brainstorming feature concepts. This included exploring different mental models, identifying any guardrails we should follow (Legal, Brand, etc), preparing for generative user testing based on outstanding questions we still needed to answer, and strategizing how to sequence research, design, and engineering.
Solidifying features, scope, requirements, OKRs/KPIs, and our roadmap
We then solidified what features we were going to prioritize for this initiative, which platforms to launch them on, their requirements, OKRs and KPIs, and what was going in the roadmap and backlog. We also identified significant technical complexities to design for, such as payment processing scenarios.
Design refinements (in parallel with generative research for upcoming features)
We started with design iterations and refinements for the first feature in the roadmap, working closely with our engineering team to identify what to refine in each round, and details such as design system improvements and component creation.
In parallel, we ran generative studies for upcoming features to identify foundational information - such as terminology for Group Gifting and mental model direction.
Throughout the whole initiative, we also tackled other topics such as overall Gifting terminology, and overcame challenges with technical limitations, funding changes, and team resource changes.
Validate designs with Usability Testing
We did Usability Testing on all of our features, and went through a last round of design refinement after each study based on customer feedback.
Final reviews, design finalization, and launch plans
I wrapped up each feature by doing reviews with cross-functional teams, finalizing my designs, creating a11y specs, doing internal pilots and ramped-up launches, and eventually fully launching these features to the public!
Impact and outcomes
Shareable Links highlights
1 week post-launch:
Beat revenue forecast by +172%!
Preliminary results: ~56% adoption and 10% growth in compose-order conversion
July 2024:
Shareable Links now makes up ~81% of mobile eGift transactions
Delivered a significant amount of revenue for Starbucks in gift activations, contributing to +7% YoY growth FYTD (still consistent)
11ppt improvement in conversion rate from eGift create page
Group Gifting highlights
July 2024:
Group Gifting is used in 25% of web activations (15ppts higher than our OKR)! This number is tripled during key gifting occasions such as Employee Appreciation Day.
Since the launch of Group Gifting, web performance (in activation dollars) has improved by 4ppts
Miscellaneous
Our Card Business partners are very happy with these outcomes
Presented Shareable Links and eGift History to the Starbucks CEO
Assisted in uplifting UI kit / component library with new gift components
Assisted in implementing key processes for the Gift Core Team overall
Next steps for Gifting
Post-launch qualitative insights have been collected
Generative research for future gift initiatives have been completed
Roadmap prepared for future iterations of gifting
Note: due to my NDA, I’m unable to show my full process or any specifics of that process on this page. Please contact me for more information!