Founded in 1866, Sherwin-Williams is a global leader in paints and coatings. However, their poor search experience results in unmet customer needs, incomplete journeys, and a competitive disadvantage in the eCommerce market. Customers struggle to find relevant colors and products, leading to lower conversion rates.
The challenge was to create an intuitive, guiding search experience that instills confidence at every stage of the customer journey.
How might we make search simple, relevant & accurate, guide customers through the journey with confidence and provide a personalized, contextually aware experience?
1. Previously, there was no global search in the top navigation, despite over 40% of PRO users relying on it. Now, a prominent search icon expands to show best-selling product recommendations for unauthenticated users.
2. From 83% of users not finding what they were looking for with search, to implementing search with synonym matching, autocomplete, and typo tolerance to drive conversion and retention.
3. From 37% of users finding no results, 39% finding irrelevant results, and 14% finding too many results, to delivering personalized, quick, and relevant search results with advanced sorting, filtering, and AI reranking to build user confidence and trust.
We organized a virtual customer journey mapping workshop to uncover UX and design insights for S-W's new search experience. This involved mapping the common paths of both DIY and PRO customers as they explore color, products, and content on SW.com.
I facilitated collaboration among various stakeholders: eComm Team (DIY & PRO), eBusiness Merchandising & eBusiness Analytics.
We met in Chicago to learn our takeaways from the journey map workshop and translated our evolved product strategy into a UX strategy to support our design thinking.
I collaborated with the Design team to create a comprehensive CX Map, blending an Empathy Map with a User Journey to understand user needs, emotions, and behaviors, while visualizing their journey and interactions.
Our UX strategy was composed of three ideals or the pillars of search— Know Me, Guide Me, Evolve With Me.
The Pillars of Search acted as a framework for organizing all elements of search that a user would interact with. This strategy enabled helpful, meaningful interactions between the site and users along the search journey.
I generated user flows and wireframes for initial usability testing, refined them through iteration, developed high-fidelity designs based on feedback, employed the S-W Dropcloth design system for UI components, and crafted four pages: Default Search, Activated Search, SERP, and 0 SERP.
After multiple rounds of testing and iterations, the design resonance feedback was resolved:
1. Initial wireframes had Trending Searches in Default Search state which users felt were irrelevant. This was replaced by Recommended Searches.
2. Not all filters resonated, including Data Sheets and Content that we previously had, which was later updated with more useful categories.
3. Initial merchandising content in SERP was visually disruptive. This was relocated further into the results grid.
Sherwin-William's site search redesign would:
1. Increase search purchase conversion rate by at least 15%
2. Increase customer's average order value by at least 10%
3. Decrease search failure rates by at least 25%
Ultimately, it would provide customers with accurate, relevant, contextually aware results to help them find more of what they need, faster.
