Argos

In 2016-2017, Argos underwent a Digital Transformation initiative to migrate to an Elasticsearch-powered microservice-based infrastructure. This change improved search relevancy and performance, provided new features, increased top-of-funnel conversion, and led to higher customer satisfaction.

The brief.

The goal of Rafael’s contract was to evaluate the experience of the existing search and browse user journeys to identify improvement opportunities while migrating to Elasticsearch.

With those insights, a new set of mobile-first templates, components, and business rules should be created to support the new implementation.

Search.

Search drives most of the product discovery at Argos.co.uk. By implementing Elasticsearch, we were able to offer users a more robust faceted search, filters, predictive results and much more.

First, a user journey mapping exercise was conducted in addition to a heuristic evaluation of the existing solution.

Then, a series of user testing sessions were conducted at the lab, and some guerrilla testing was conducted at the London Victoria store using a high-fidelity prototype made in Axure.

The final solution was a set of detailed wireframes following a responsive design approach, which were refined in collaboration with the team’s visual designer.

User stories were created, documented and prioritised in close collaboration with the cross-functional squad and the product owner.

The first iteration of the Elasticsearch implementation was released before Black Friday 2017 when millions of consumers searched and purchased products with confidence and zero downtime.

Browse.

Browsing is the second most used way of discovering products within specific categories.

The previous solution for category pages was purely focused on navigation. There were no contextual offers, and the experience on a mobile device was inferior to that offered by the app.

After facilitating workshops with the sales and digital teams, several iterations of the category landing page were created and tested with clients.

Still considering mobile and tablets, we ensured the content on these pages would be easy to digest on small screens.

The new experience enabled better product discovery via browsing, allowing Argos to promote seasonal offers.

In addition to the new templates, after close collaboration with the taxonomist and visual designer, Rafael created the refreshed main menu and in-page category navigation.

Outcome.

With the launch of the new Search and Browse experiences powered by Elasticsearch, Argos rapidly reached its top-of-funnel KPIs, leading to higher customer satisfaction.

Visit https://argos.co.uk