Best Buy is a leading provider of technology products, services, and solutions. Whether customers visit their stores, engage with Geek Squad agents in their homes, or use BestBuy.com or the Best Buy app, Best Buy works to enrich the lives of their customers through technology across a range of areas, including entertainment, productivity, communication, food, security and health.

As a member of the Profile Product Team at Best Buy, I was enlisted to help redesign the existing online credit card application with the purpose of improving the overall performance of the experience as well as expanding the platforms on which the experience was available in order to meet our customers’ ever evolving needs. The goals of the redesign included:

1. Increasing customer engagement with the credit card application

2. Decreasing abandonment from the credit card application

3. Increasing post-application purchases

4. Providing customers the ability to complete the credit card application on a mobile device

In order to understand how to best go about achieving these goals, both quantitative and qualitative data was used to help identify the issues within the existing experience, understand why they were problematic, and inform how these pain points could be remedied.

For the quantitative data, analytics from the live experience were gathered and evaluated; for the qualitative data, moderated in-person usability tests were conducted with 8 different test subjects. The analytics from the live experience and observations from the usability study were consistent and revealed:

Unauthenticated Flow more common

Analytics from the live experience showed that on the first step of the application process, most users bypassed the account login in favor of the unauthenticated application flow, even if they already had a BestBuy.com account.

The usability study corroborated this. Most users didn’t naturally read the sub-copy located below the headline, “Skip a Step. Sign In to BestBuy.com.”

However, for those who did, the message was clear. When users were made aware of its presence, all of them understood the benefit of authenticating before the application, and given the scenario of having an existing account, all said they would prefer to continue by signing in.

Citibank Application Form Long & Cumbersome

Analytics showed that while the bounce rate from the first step of the application was relatively low, the majority of users abandoned the CitiBank application form where all of the user’s personal information was collected.

Observations from the usability study suggested that while the form in and of itself wasn’t the key reason for abandonment (users expected to have to fill out a form in order to apply for a credit card), many users commented that the form didn’t quite work as they expected it to.

It was also unclear to users when the application was complete and what steps needed to be taken in order to shop online right away once they were approved. Some mentioned the further they got into the form, the more frustrated they became and continually questioned if they would be able to shop online today the deeper they got into the application.

The findings from the evaluations of the existing experience were then used to help guide the redesign of the credit card application. Key enhancements to make as identified by the analytics and usability study included:

1. Increase logins by users that already have BestBuy.com accounts

2. Whether or not users already have a BestBuy.com account, pull as much of the user’s information forward from the Best Buy side of the application into the Citibank application form to simplify and expedite the application process

3. More clearly and prominently message to users when their application is complete, the ability to shop immediately after credit card approval, and how to do so

Additionally, during the usability study, users identified a number of unexpected behaviors with the CitiBank application form that hindered their experience. These were communicated to CitiBank, and they used the feedback to improve their application form.

Once the redesign was complete, the next step was to validate the new experience with another round of usability testing. This usability study consisted of 11 one-on-one in person moderated sessions with task-based scenarios on both desktop and mobile devices.

Overall, the new experience was an upgrade to the old one. A comparison of the usability study performed on the previous experience compared to the usability study performed on the new one showed:

Phase 1 Usability Study

Application long and cumbersome.

Unclear when application process was over.

Nearly all were uncertain if they could shop today.

Nearly all were uncertain how virtual card would work, but assumed card would be added to BestBuy.com account for use in cart.

While overall the new experience was an upgrade to the old, there was also still room for improvement:

1. About 50% of users were still missing the Sign In link at the bottom of the page

   • When users already had an existing BestBuy.com account, this would create duplicate My Best Buy (Best Buy’s rewards program) accounts, which wasn’t ideal from a user or business perspective

2. Users didn’t initially realize they were leaving BestBuy.com to go to CitiBank until they were leaving CitiBank to return back to BestBuy.com, which they found disorienting

3. Lack of City and State fields as well as default text for Social Security Number caused confusion on the CitiBank application form

Prior to launching the new credit card application, the feedback from the second usability study was incorporated into the design of the new experience:

1. Not only was Sign In prioritized as the means of starting the application, but the decision was made to gate the experience by forcing users to either sign in or create an account. A check against the user’s email address was also added at sign in/create an account to ensure that users were signing in when they already had a BestBuy.com account and to prevent duplicate accounts.

2. Additional messaging was added to inform the user when they were leaving BestBuy.com to complete the CitiBank application form.

3. Feedback from the second usability study regarding confusion around the lack of City and State fields as well as the default text for Social Security Number was given to CitiBank so that they could improve their application form.

Overall, the redesign of the credit card application was an improvement to the previous experience with the results being mostly positive:

1. Overall engagement increased

2. Overall abandonment decreased slightly

   • However, where users abandoned the application process most frequently moved from the CitiBank application form (previous experience) to the sign in/create account step (new experience)

3. Number of post-application online purchases as well as the revenue and profit generated from those purchases increased

Because the abandonment increased on the first step of the application process from the previous experience to the new one, I’d like to do some research to help determine why sign in/create account is such a deterrent and how to potentially encourage more customers to get past that hurdle to decrease the credit card application’s abandonment even further.