Austin
2021-2023
A 65% cart abandonment rate on the current experience drives the need to unlock Whole Foods Market's catering business on Amazon and meet customers where they are already shopping. My role was to play within the constraints of the Amazon platform to create a seamless ordering experience and then move forward to lead UX for Team Member tools in order to support the customer experience.

Ordering Whole Foods Market Catering on Amazon to meet customers where they are.

The Whole Foods Market Catering business aims to own celebrations with a high quality menu that inspires guests to host occasions large and small. The business brings in 90M (2022) annually and 76% of those orders are during the Thanksgiving holiday. The current experience is hosted on an unreliable third-party development framework, inhibiting us to build in crucial e-commerce features like authentication for effortless reordering and seamless checkout. Unlocking this business on the Amazon's platform, will allow us to leverage their expertise in order management logistics and order promise.

Moderated Concept Testing

Remote Moderated Prototype Evaluation with n=21 customers

Key questions:

  1. What features were users gravitating towards?
  2. What brings them the most hesitation?
  3. How did the site make them feel compared to shopping in-store?
  4. Would they be more likely to use this site or stay on Amazon?
Overwhelming positive feedback proved that customers were interested in the following themes when it comes to shopping for groceries online.

1. Increased Efficiency
2. Inspirational Content and Recommended Items
3. Personalization
4. Brand Recognition

Post Launch

In-store Pickup Location

During store intercepts, customers were not clear where they needed to pick up their order. Store layouts are unique from store to store which makes it difficult to implement a solution across all stores. We worked with Marketing to design clear signage designating where to go after placing the order as well as displaying a map on the confirmation screen.

(OUTCOME and OPPORTUNITIES)

(1-Outcome)

150 Stores, 306MM annually

Soft launch rollout to 150 stores in 2023 and all stores by end of 2024 proves this was the right decision for customers.

Driver to Adoption

Positive sentiment to drive adoption — shoppers like having the option of shopping both groceries and catering on Amazon. It’s a familiar model to them and helps alleviate the learning curve for how it works.

Owned Channel Experience

The unique challenges we faced to launch on Amazon helped carve out commitment towards building a fully branded experience on Whole Foods Market’s channel for those who want it while leveraging Amazon tech services and seamless checkout & post-order experience.

(2-Opportunities)

Storefront A/B Testing

Given the limitations of the Amazon storefront, how might we iterate and optimize on the storefront to guide users into assortment that meets their needs.

Catering Planner

For those that need a little extra hand holding, how might we offer a tool that allows them to input their event details and receive expert recommendations and add-ons.

B2B/Customer Concierge

How might we expand to serve B2B customers and offer concierge service to those who want advice, servers and setup/cleanup help.

(3-Project Team)

Dream Team

Product Design Lead: Hanisha Patel

UX Support: Molly Woods

UX Manager: Natalie Dare

Product Manager: Roshan Jhala and Mark Misudek

Research: Maggie McMahon and Arthur Wang

Development: WFM and Amazon Engineering

Brand Marketing Support: WFM Design Team

*All images are owned by Whole Foods Market.
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