Overview

The project

Launching personalization on mbusa.com

Our goal for this engagement was to discover and leverage opportunities for personalization to add value in key moments across the entire customer journey. After implementing our design and strategy, Mercedes-Benz saw a +460% increase in likelihood of purchase and a +128% boost in lead submissions.

My Role

Product Designer

The Team

1 Senior Product Designer

1 Creative Director

2 Visual Designers

1 Data Analyst

1 Technology Lead

Client

Mercedes-Benz

Company

Publicis Sapient

Project Type

Personalization, Data Strategy, E-commerce

Timeline

3 Months

Tools

Figma

Mural

My Impact

I co-led the data strategy and design for introducing personalization to mbusa.com.

I personally came up with the idea of leveraging data from "micro-interactions" to fuel customer profiling and personalization.

We earned strong metrics post-launch:

+460% increase in likelihood of purchase

+128% boost in lead submissions

I co-led several key parts of the project including:

Designing the UX of the personalization strategy

Defining the data strategy

Research synthesis

A workshop series with Mercedes-Benz to identify areas of opportunity

Competitive analysis

Presenting and gaining client approval

Collaborating with and handing off to development team

The Problem

The Mercedes-Benz website has a high volume of web traffic but had a low percentage of visitors that convert into new buyers.

Along with the high volume of web traffic, they were collecting a tremendous amount of data but weren't creating meaningful insights from them.

The Solution

Give customers the opportunity to provide Mercedes-Benz with direct and actionable insights, and the customer would experience immediate value from the data they provided.

Leveraging Micro-interactions throughout the page to gather insights, and giving instant feedback to the user.

Start of section: The Process

Research

To understand the customers perspective as well as the problems we were aiming to solve, we conducted research to find key themes to guide our approach. This project did not allow time to talk to users so we decided on methods that were quicker to execute but would still give us enough information to gain a strong perspective:

  1. A workshop series with leaders from Mercedes-Benz

  2. Card sorting key themes from the workshop

  3. A competitive audit of how automotive companies and adjacent industries leverage personalization

A workshop series with leaders from Mercedes-Benz

Card sorting key themes from the workshop

Key Takeaways

1

Quick feedback mechanisms to the user

2

Discover "indirect needs" of the customer

3

Found key moments in the customer journey that have the most leverage on business outcomes

Entering the Design Phase

Our strategy

(Derived from our research outcomes)

Give customers the opportunity to provide Mercedes-Benz with direct and actionable insights, and the customer would experience immediate value from the data they provided.

Designing the UX and Data Strategy

Micro-interactions are interactive components where we can learn from the customer by giving them an opportunity to directly or indirectly tells us their needs for a vehicle.

My sketches

Micro-interaction #1

Dynamic and interactive homepage to enable vehicle discovery

Data captured

The category of vehicles the customer prefers to interact with

What can we do with this data

  • Profile customer segments for large-scale personalization

  • Personalized vehicle suggestions

  • Predict which category of vehicles will be in-demand

Micro-interaction #2

Bite-sized prompts to fuel accurate customer profiling

Data captured

Direct answers to specific needs and preferences for a potential vehicle purchase

What can we do with this data

  • More detailed profile customer segments for large-scale personalization

  • More detailed personalized vehicle suggestions

  • Predict which vehicles will be in-demand that season

  • Pre-made custom builds

Micro-interaction #3

Owners return to shopping experience

Data captured

Relevant updates to the customer’s financial and social needs and conditions.

What can we do with this data

  • Generate leads for their local dealership

  • Update their customer profile

  • Context filled vehicle suggestions

  • Predict which vehicles will be in-demand that season

Visual Design

After gaining approval on the direction of my wireframes, I handed my designs off to our visual design team to apply the Mercedes-Benz branding.

Micro-interaction #1

Dynamic and interactive homepage to enable vehicle discovery

Micro-interaction #2

Bite-sized prompts to fuel accurate customer profiling

Micro-interaction #3

Owners return to shopping experience

Results

After launching personalization on mbusa.com, Mercedes-Benz saw strong metrics impacting their business:

+460% increase in likelihood of purchase

+128% boost in lead submissions

I co-led several key parts of the project including:

Designing the UX of the personalization strategy

Defining the data strategy

Research synthesis

A workshop series with Mercedes-Benz to identify areas of opportunity

Competitive analysis

Presenting and gaining client approval

Collaborating with and handing off to development team


Thank you for reading.