Quarantine… More Like Quarandrink
Why I believe Winc Wines Should take a second look at the user experience of some of their features.
As quarantine started to prove it was here to stay, like many, my family found a way to celebrate the end of each day with a glass of wine, and we’ve been able to do that through Winc, the wine club membership and delivery service.
Winc’s focus is to “make the experience of exploring wine easy and pleasurable — So that you can spend more time enjoying the wine in your glass.” However, as a UX Designer and lover of wine, it pains me to say that as a user, my experience was not always parallel to their expectations. But let me be clear, the part about enjoying the wine they nailed!
The pain points as a user occurred while trying to use their website.
For those of you unaware of this website, let me walk you through the process. As a first time user, you are prompted to take a quiz allowing Winc to better understand your palette, and ultimately populate wines catered to your tastes. Overall, this is the main reason I was drawn to this product. I loved the idea of trying new wines with a high percentage of liking them. Unfortunately, though, this is where my UX hat comes on.
After pressing submit on the last quiz answer, I was directed to the checkout page. Although it did contain four bottles of wines that were catered to my preferences, I felt as if it were a forced interaction. In other words, it began to feel as if Winc only cared about me buying their wine, and not about my experience as a customer.
From a business standpoint, I understand why Winc did this. However, from a UX view, feeling forced into an interaction is never good. Therefore, here is my suggested redesign.
Instead of automatically directing the user to the checkout page, I would send the user to an explore page. There, the user could browse through all the wine options, starting with the directly linked recommendations and flow into the lesser related wines as the user continued to scroll. This allows the user to see which of the wines they would like the most while decreasing the feeling of being forced into an outcome.
With this said, that would be my first solution to this so-called problem. However, another way to maintain the business model of pushing users to buy the wine while also providing an easy way to explore wine could be done this way.
Right now, the site works that on the checkout page if you click the button labeled “Edit Box” you are sent to a page containing all the wines the site offers. As the user, I found this confusing since I expected the page to show me wines that were also recommended to me based on my preferences, not the entire list of wines based on fan picks.
My suggestion here really is a quick and easy fix, but one that I believe will largely impact the customer’s experience. I would recommend splitting the wines into categories based on the user’s answers to the questions.
For example, a header could be “For The Fruity Lover” or “Bold, Just Like Your Coffee.” For those who have not taken a Winc preference quiz before, they have a question about how much you like berries and one about how you prefer your coffee. This way, as the user you know the wines are directly tied back to your original preferences.
Both these suggestions are minor from a redesign standpoint, but for a user, they will really increase their experience. Needless to say, I am excited to watch as Winc grows as a company and to continue trying their wines as I continue to cross off the days of quarantine.
