Case Study

Google Shopping

Providing unique value to shoppers in a mega-competitive space—creating a personalized homepage experience that helps users discover products and buy with confidence.

Role

Interaction Designer

Company

Google

Timeline

May 2019 – Nov 2019

Impact

+22.59% Add to Carts

The Challenge

Google Shopping was competing in a mega-competitive space—we were 10 years behind Amazon. To win, we couldn't just match the competition. We needed to provide unique value that shoppers couldn't find anywhere else.

The Opportunity

How might we leverage Google's unique strengths—search intelligence, personalization, and cross-platform presence—to create a shopping experience that feels distinctly valuable?

🏠

Personalized Homepage

A redesigned homepage with smart recommendations tailored to each shopper.

Buy with Confidence

Features that help shoppers make informed decisions and trust their purchases.

1

A More Personalized Homepage

The existing Google Shopping homepage was underutilized. Users went directly to search, missing opportunities for discovery. We set out to create a destination worth visiting—a place where shoppers could browse, discover, and find things they didn't know they wanted.

Design Goal

Create a homepage with really good recommendations—ones that feel personally relevant, not just algorithmically generated.

The Approach

We leveraged Google's deep understanding of user intent—search history, browsing patterns, and cross-platform signals—to surface products that matched each user's interests and needs.

Key Insight

Shopping isn't just about finding specific items—it's also about discovery. By making browsing enjoyable and serendipitous, we could capture a different user intent entirely: the joy of window shopping, digitized.

+5.65%
Whole page engagement
+22.59%
Add to Carts
2

Helping Shoppers Buy with Confidence

Online shopping comes with inherent uncertainty. Is this the right size? Is this a good deal? Will I regret this purchase? We explored ways to reduce this anxiety and help shoppers feel confident in their decisions.

The Challenge

How might we reduce purchase anxiety and help shoppers make informed decisions—especially for considered purchases like clothing, electronics, and home goods?

Explorations

We explored multiple approaches across different product categories, testing with real users to understand what information they needed most at the moment of decision.

The explorations spanned categories from women's down jackets to Nike Air Max sneakers—understanding that different products require different confidence-building signals.

Reflection

Key Learnings

Competing with Amazon wasn't about copying their features—it was about finding our unique strengths. Google's search intelligence and cross-platform presence gave us insights that no other shopping platform had. The key was translating those signals into genuinely helpful shopping experiences.

Next Project

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