Research continually pointed to convenience being a determining conversion factor for consumers. Groupon pursued growth through expanded value-adds on top of their existing discounts. But with booking , expanded inventory, repeat engagements, and robust merchant info came a necessary shift in the way merchants, not deals, were discovered and engaged.
This multi-year strategy hit major architectural roadblocks while we remapped data for proof-of-concepts and tested new user interfaces. Consistent quick-wins and positive user feedback drove the project through senior leadership and executive attrition, finally resulting in a first-of-its kind small-scale release of merchant-centric pages featuring multi-category full menus to drive packaging and repeat purchases.
With new inventory requiring differentiated transaction funnels, we tested a Merchant Page as entry point from discovery. While this clarified offerings, simplified engineering, and actually tested well, it added a worrisome layer of complexity for consumers.Our main objective quickly became aggregation of offerings for each merchant resulting in one-stop-shopping for consumers.With test participants reacting positively to our multi-option deal cards, we found a way to list deal options in our live production environment, giving us a significant lift in conversion and validating the path toward deal aggregation.End-to-end engineering complexity and cross-vertical validation took us through many workshops and explorations before roadmapping MVP features that got our strategy on track.Positive response to our final north star prototype lead to the launch of Full Menu, our first-ever aggregated merchant inventory deal page.
