bdg product search dashboard
Bustle Digital Group (BDG) is a global media company home to 11 brands reaching one of the largest Millenial and Gen Z audiences. Site content includes the topics of lifestyle, entertainment, technology, gaming, parenting and more. Much of BDG’s revenue is driven by shoppable articles, listicles, and slideshows powered via the CMS product search dashboard.
My Role
UX/UI Design & Research
The Problem
Commerce team needs to replace a high frequency of products for over 200 pages across all sites per week. Frequency is currently limited by the team’s bandwidth and the manual effort required to replace product cards.
Objective
Automate manual processes for shoppable articles to increase revenue and team efficiency by enhancing the existing internal product search dashboard.
PRODUCT DISCOVERY
Requirements received from product management included:
A search/filtering capability for aggregator products within the BDG content management system (CMS)
An enhanced product card search experience with additional filters
CROSS FUNCTIONAL INTERVIEWS
In order to get a better understanding of the issue at hand, I spoke with members of the commerce team as well as contributors responsible for updating content. The need for this update stemmed from the commerce’s team’s limited bandwidth to replace a high frequency of product cards.
Two of the main scenarios driving product replacement include: when a product is sold out and when a page is optimized to increase revenue via product purchases.
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I learned that the existing process required the use of part time colleagues to click through each product across hundreds of pages to see the inventory status on Amazon and other sites. The commerce team then tracks these products manually on a spreadsheet, which is then sent to writers and editors who are tasked with replacing the sold out items.
This process results in duplication of product cards and opportunity for human error.
Key Findings
The current product search dashboard does not provide an intuitive experience for finding exact product instances
Editors are unsure of how a change in an existing product card will affect other pages
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On a regular basis, the commerce team hand picks which pages will be optimized for revenue purposes. The products within these pages are often swapped out for aggregator products if they are underperforming.
The commerce team will pass a document with the products needing to be replaced to a team of writers and editors. These individuals will then go through and select aggregator products that best match the existing products. There are several roadblocks to this process making it extremely time consuming and inefficient.
Key Findings
It is unclear which products are/are not aggregator products within the CMS. This makes it difficult to track which products have already been updated and which have not been.
The process of searching for aggregate products is another major pain point. When choosing an aggregator product to replace an existing product, the commerce team uses several different criteria and has to search through large Excel documents to find them
DESIGN OPPORTUNITIES
Enhancing our product card search feature by adding additional search parameters such as stock, page ID, and ASIN would increase efficiency, eliminate time consuming work, and allow editors to more confidently replace products.
An indication of whether or not a product is sold out within the CMS
An indication of whether or not a product is an aggregator product within the CMS
A process for searching and filtering through aggregator products within the CMS
Enhance product card search feature to allow searching via ASIN in addition to search by product name
Add sorting capabilities to organize search results based on user needs and goals
sample user journeys
Given an article, replace the sold out product(s)
Locate sold out products via the product search dashboard
Given an article/page, optimize by replacing products with aggregator products
editor overview
Aggregator and sold out product flags to make product replacement and page optimization easier.
SEARCH DASHBOARD OVERVIEW
More filters and sorting parameters enable users to find products via price, inventory status, source, aggregator, page placement, and more.
SEARCH RESULT CLOSEUP
The product search results provided an opportunity to present more information to the user, allowing them to make more educated choices when choosing products to populate articles. We added the following parameters: source, price, stock status, aggregator, category, brand, and page appearances. Search results also include KPIs such as commission rate, click through rate and revenue to date.
replacing product with aggregator product
This process previously required an immense amount of manual labor, searching through extensive spreadsheets to locate a specific product. Users can now filter by aggregator and easily identify aggregator products within any given article and search results. Sorting capabilities allow users to make informed decisions when choosing products to place.
replacing sold out products
Prior to the dashboard updates, users would have to manually check each product source to see the inventory status. Updated filters and iconography indicate which products are sold out in a clear and concise manner.
