BED, BATH, & BEYOND
Registry App Design
Bed, Bath & Beyond is a big box retail store that has defied all odds with their business strategies, able to stay competitive with companies like Amazon while sticking to the older overwhelm-with-anything-you-can-imagine-in-store marketing scheme. One of the most prominent aspects of the company is its Bridal Registry program, which has become one of the foremost bridal registry programs in the nation.
While what they currently do works, it can come across as easily confusing and misleading to the customer wishing to shop on a couple’s registry. As a long-time employee of the company, I have a great deal of experience with the registry program and where it can improve.
The most common things I see with the current registry system is when people come into the store with the registry pulled up on their phone, or a print off from their home computer. Both of these methods can quickly become out-dated (depending on when the registry was printed from home) and leave it very unclear as to what is available in store at that time. This leads to the bridal couple receiving doubles (and in some cases triples) of items they’ve registered for and creates a hassle for them to have to return the extra product.
While the registry print offs we provide to shoppers in store is the most up to date and easy to read list, it takes a fairly lengthy initial explanation to the customer and is, frankly, a waste of paper. In addition, not all customers know or want us to print off a registry for them.
I have chosen to solve this problem by designing a mobile application that streamlines the registry buying process. The Bed, Bath & Beyond registry app allows customers to access a couple’s bridal registry and sync it to the physical store they are shopping in at that time using GPS and location services. It will then show only the items that are available in store (that haven’t been purchased yet and not online-exclusive product) in an easy to navigate, categorized list, with a provided price filter to aid the customer with their shopping experience.
Not only that, but once the customer has chosen to specify a price cap and added an initial item to their list, the only items the app will continue to show to them are those that cost the same or less than the remaining price quota (for example they have a $160 price limit and want to purchase a $130 blender. Only items $30 or less will appear after the blender has been added to their list).
Once the customer has compiled their list, the locate function pulls up an in-store map that will lead them through the store in the most efficient path, directly to the items they want to purchase. This will aid in making a more pleasurable and streamlined shopping experience.
When the customer has collected their items from the floor and proceed to the checkout lines, the app will prompt the shopper to present a barcode to the cashier. This will insure that the items are counted against the registry in the store system and generate a barcode at the bottom of the printed receipt, which the customer would then scan to officially remove the items from the registry.