Failing, to Learn

Some positive thoughts on negative moments

There are a lot of stories out there about successful projects, but it’s less common to hear about projects that didn’t go as planned. It can be hard to talk about times when things didn’t work as well as you predicted. Sometimes, despite the best efforts of the team and some well-informed decisions, things just don’t work out. Instead of dismissing what could be perceived as “mistakes” and “failures,” I’ve found these moments are some of the most impactful when it comes to growth on both an individual and team level.

Wayfair launched a wedding registry in late 2016, and we’re constantly trying different ways to improve our experience in these early days. We came upon the decision to revamp our registry landing page because — even in the short year since launch — some of the components and patterns we were using had become outdated. Additionally, we wanted to increase the amount of people that created wedding registries with us. The thought was that we could accomplish this by making some different design choices. Here’s what our original landing page looked like:

This was my first opportunity to do a registry-specific project, and what a great project to test the waters with. The opportunity to design the page that could inspire couples to build their future with us? I’m in! Or, more fittingly, I do!

This project began as most others do at Wayfair: with key stakeholders (designers, copywriters, engineers, product managers, marketing) getting together to talk about the task and align on the goals. We decided on what information we wanted to keep from the original version, and what we thought we should add in order to increase registry creates. Here are the 10 things we felt the landing page should have (in no particular order):

• App Access
• Brands
• Testimonials
• Benefits
• Product Offering
• Featured Registries
• Content Articles
• Video
• FAQs
• Sweepstakes

Once we finalized this list, the design team recommended that we talk to actual registrants to ensure that we were moving forward with our customer in mind. We decided to do a card sorting activity, where we asked 10 brides/grooms (current, upcoming, and/or past) to rank the 10 requirements listed above in order of importance when choosing a registry. Through this, we discovered some key trends and points of feedback that we then used to guide our recommendations and designs.

Based on these findings, we decided to make some alterations to the original list of 10 requirements. We proposed (the registry puns are endless) that we focus the landing page design on our product offering, brands, and benefits. We felt this would provide potential registrants with the most relevant information when deciding whether to create a registry or not. We also decided to change some copy and highlight additional benefits, based on what we heard from brides/grooms. Here’s where we landed (pun intended) with our landing page:

Before (left) and after (right)

We shared the design with the rest of the team, along with our reasoning, and everyone was bought in. With some minor tweaks here and there, we decided to release the new page and test it against the previous version. Of course, registrants loved the newer landing page and we increased registry creates ten-fold. (I’ve always wanted to say something like that.)

Nope. That’s not what happened. The original version outperformed the new design by earning more creates. And it was the last project I was ever allowed to work on at Wayfair…

Nope. That also didn’t happen (yet). Though the original version performed better by the numbers, no one could deny the positive things that came out of the process of designing the new version. The card sorting activity helped us better understand real registrants, allowing us to create a customer-centric design. However, you can’t learn everything about them from one design or customer interview — just like you won’t know everything about wine from having one sip of Two Buck Chuck (except to never drink Two Buck Chuck again).

Though we could rationalize the under-performance of our new design, we still had a lot of questions to ask ourselves. Were we communicating our product offering in the best way? Did we provide too many ways for registrants to get distracted, instead of letting them learn about what Wayfair could do for them? Did we make the landing page feel less aspirational and inspiring? Honestly, we’re still trying to figure it out.

Ultimately, we decided to move forward with the new design since it better aligns with where we’re heading as a brand. We’ve done more user testing on both versions to better understand what resonates about each one, and this helped us identify ways we could incorporate elements of the original version into our new design. We’re doing individual testing of different sections of the page, to see if we can gather data around what works best and in what order. This will be a long process, but we think the data that we’ll gain will help us optimize the landing page so that it performs better than ever. Eventually, we’ll get more customers to say “I do” to using our registry, but it will take some time before we get it right.

Instead of focusing on the fact that our new landing page “failed,” our team embraced the opportunity to reflect and identify ways to improve it over time. The goal is to always be moving toward an end target, learning along the way — and you won’t just learn about your customer. Our team learned a great deal about ourselves and our process:

• Test early and test often. It never hurts to have a continuous discussion with your customers to see what’s working and what’s not. Have a plan in place for how to build testing into your timeline. A lot of people might argue this can slow you down, but you can design things quickly and get them into the hands of your customers right away. Be smart about what and how you’re testing and make sure that it focuses on the problem and the customer.
• Share your failures. When you shy away from talking about the things that went wrong, it can actually lead to more issues down the road. It’s also important to be vocal about this within the design community. Failure will happen and the more people share their stories, the better it will be for all designers to understand and grow.
• People are complex and so are the problems they face. It takes time to fully understand a problem, and even longer to understand the people who face these problems. Listen to customers and learn what matters to them, then observe what they actually do. People can contradict themselves, and you have to take both their actions and their words into account in order to understand what they need. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. We know more about our customer today than we did yesterday, and we’ll know more about them tomorrow.
• Stay the course. Don’t jump ship when things don’t go as planned. When designing, keep your customer at the forefront and follow a plan to get to a solution to their problem, but remember to be flexible. Make adjustments and move forward with a positive attitude. You’ll get there eventually. Take it from Michael Jordan, the G.O.A.T. himself.

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Own your failures. Talk about them. Learn from them. Help others get through them. We will all be better off.

Special thanks to Shelby Smith and Amanda Morrison for helping me write words better.