AI Shopping Assistant

OPPORTUNITY

As the Sr. Director of the Transactional Team at Dotdash Meredith, I was tasked to help users confidently find and purchase the products that fit their needs and provide valuable features that would increase return visits.

Based on these business needs and the goals of our Researcher Persona, we proposed an AI driven chatbot that compiles information from multiple resources and provides a flexible, conversational way for users to get relevant product details, read customer reviews, and track prices reducing bounce rate and providing an incentive to return.

The Process

My team and I conducted user research including user interviews and continuous usability testing to deeply understand our users goals, needs, & pain points of The Researcher Persona. We used this data to optimize our product roundup template and explore how we could streamline our users’ experience across their full shopping journey.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Consumers researching products visit multiple “Best Of” sites, retailers, and platforms to validate sources, evaluate options, and hunt for the best price. In a world where organic traffic from Google is declining, the business is looking to build direct relationships with consumers and be the final step in their shopping journey.

HOW MIGHT WE...

Provide all the information consumers need in one place to make a confident purchase decision and become a trusted resource for future purchases?

PROPOSED SOLUTION

Meet the AI Shopping Assistant!

The Shopping Assistant can query data such as content from the Dotdash Meredith product database along with external partner data such as Amazon to support tasks at any stage of the consumer’s shopping journey, such as…

Personalized product recommendations based on user criteria
Surfacing relevant details about each product
Building comparisons of selected products
Gathering customer reviews from retailers
Showing price history
Saving products and tracking prices

HYPOTHESIS

By providing all the information and functionality consumers need in one place, they are more likely to convert on our sites, and return for their future product research needs.