Erin Condren "Back Soon" PLP

Project Description

My Role: UX Research, UX Direction, Project Management.

Designer: W. Murphy

At Erin Condren, our planners would temporarily become unavailable for purchase during our annual refresh. During this period, our category PLPs displayed a basic "coming back soon" message. As a result, customers frequently turned to social media and customer support to voice their confusion and frustration regarding the unavailability of our products.

Customer Research

In response to this feedback, I kickstarted a project to improve this experience. I started with customer journey mapping to analyze the experiences of both new and returning customers within both gifting and self-purchase pathways. This allowed us to identify the specific pain points and areas of opportunity for optimization within this flow.

Creating an Action Plan

Based on these findings, I presented our plan to stakeholders – focused on optimizing the customer journey via two primary objectives:

Improve Customer Education

Provide a clear explanation to educate customers on why certain products are unavailable at this time. Also provide them with an easy-to-access way to be notified when products are ready to purchase.

Provide a Conversion Path

Ensure that our customers always have an accessible conversion option, redirecting them to alternative products and categories.

End Result 

I worked with the UX/UI designer to ensure that our goals were integrated into an intuitive and user-friendly design, through the following approaches: 

Adding Back in Stock Alerts 

I collaborated with the social media team to implement a text alert  feature, allowing customers to be instantly informed when the products return for purchase.  

Clear Customer Education

I collaborated with our marketing and copywriting teams to develop concise and clear messaging that educated our customers about our unique "back soon" period and set clear expectations with return dates clearly visible. 

Merchandising In-Stock Products 

I worked with the merchandising team to add products to the inactive PLPs that catered to both our self-purchase and gifting personas. These included related in-stock items and gift cards to promote future purchases. 

By integrating these strategies into the new design, we provided a more informative and engaging experience for customers, ultimately driving conversions and improving our overall user satisfaction.