Seamless Ecommerce Integration: Allstate Protection Plans
Homemakers abruptly ended its partnership with Guardsman Furniture Protection and made the switch to Allstate Protection Plans. During the transition period, customers were without coverage options which caused confusion and impacted brand trust. I had to adapt quickly to lead the Allstate integration with the ecommerce website to create a seamless experience that restored customer confidence, increased conversion and plan attachment rate.
This is still in development slated for a September 2025 launch.
Company
Homemakers Furniture
Role
UX Designer
Employment
Full-time
Timeframe
November 2024 – May 2025
Key Focus Areas
UX Design, UI Design, Visual Design, Research, Developer Handoff, A/B Testing, Frontend (HTML/CSS)
The Problem
After an abrupt shift from Guardsman to Allstate Protection Plans, customers were left uncertain about their furniture protection options which created confusion and risked trust at a critical moment along a customer’s purchase journey.
The Result?
Increased hesitation & missed revenue opportunities
Discovery & Strategy
What Research Revealed the Problem?
Research & Understanding
Allstate requires interstitial pop-ups for every add to cart, but I knew this would become a primary friction/pain point for the average shopper. This is one of the many challenges that I would need to face when designing a solution. We conducted a competitive analysis on how other leading retailers integrated their Allstate Protection Plans such as Target, NFM and Wayfair. In my findings from our competitors, I found many pain points on NFM that would contribute to cognitive load. I also performed a heuristic evaluation of the current protection plan process from Homemakers’ previous protection plan partner, Guardsman Furniture Protection which involved diving into current user flows to improve the overall experience for the Allstate implementation.
Understanding Business Opportunities & Goals
- Switch to a very well-known and reputable protection plan provider to increase trustworthiness
- Refine and enhance the user journey to increase plan attachment rate
- Reduce customer service inquiries related to protection plans by clearly stating value proposition
How Does the Research Help Shape the Solution?
My Hypothesis
If I streamline the protection plan experience by minimizing friction, clarifying the value proposition, and aligning with user expectations based on competitor analysis, then we will increase the plan attachment rate, reduce cognitive load, and decrease customer service inquiries related to protection plans.
Define
Allstate’s Best Practices & Recommendations
- Interstitial pop-up for product pages when user clicks add to cart, recommended after each add to cart
- Keep the pop-up short and simple, recommended to add value proposition
- Learn more links for users to learn about Allstate Protection and the benefits
Competitor Analysis
Design Goals
Seamless Experience
To avoid drop-offs and reduce friction in the purchase journey
Clear Value
Users need clear value propositions to add protection to their items
Familiar
Users are more likely to trust and engage with predictable offerings
Ideate
Early Design Stages
Previous Business Data with Guardsman
Given all of the data and research I had for this implementation, I decided to keep similar page positioning for Allstate related items as we had with Guardsman. But instead focusing more on optimizing the user journey and reducing friction throughout the purchase experience.
Design Decisions & Refinement
Design Decision #1
Homemakers IT and I had two different backend approaches to think about and make a choice on one approach. Whichever option was chosen at this point was the direction I followed for my designs. Ultimately, our stakeholders and I opted for option 2 as it benefitted the customer having to pay less for their total protection when including more items in their cart.
- Option 1
Adding the protection plan line item-by-line item which was simplest in terms of presenting plans and prices on the frontend. This meant every item had a single price associated with it depending on which warranty category it was under. - Option 2
Adding the protection plan line item-by-line item, except this approach aggregates all like products together from a category based on a pricing table. A little more complex, but definitely possible. This meant two like items would be aggregated together and the item with the highest price tier would be the price of the plan for both items.
Design Decision #2
Allstate recommended an interstitial pop-up on every add to cart. I disagreed with this approach as it would create too much friction and disruption for our users seeing a pop-up for every add to cart which would result in a decrease of revenue and conversion. We can prevent a customer from getting frustrated by limiting the amount of pop-ups they receive when adding products to their cart. After adding two products to cart and choosing to decline protection on their added products, they will not receive anymore pop-ups throughout their journey. Two was picked based on average item add to cart per user. However, the user would still have the opportunity one last time during checkout to add protection on their purchase. This is where AB testing becomes important later on because I will want to experiment different designs and flows to continue to refine this even after go live.
Testing
Test Opportunities Planned After Launch
- Optimizing the User Flow
By optimizing the user flow, we can prevent a customer from getting frustrated by limiting the amount of plan pop-ups they receive when adding products to their cart. After adding two products to cart and declining protection on their products, they will not receive anymore pop-ups throughout their journey. However, they will still have the option to manually check a box during checkout to cover all their products for an grouped price based on the products in their cart.
Implementation
Design in Action
Results & Impact
Overall Results and Impact
This program hasn’t been implemented on the website yet, but is actively being developed in the backend and being used in-store. We are aiming to increase conversions for both products and protection plans while increasing trustworthiness with well-known Allstate Protection Plans. This page will be updated again when it launches and I start receiving data.
