The next iteration delved deeply into the crucial flows for product browsing, order reconciliation, and, arguably the most important experience, the order process.
At the center of the e-commerce system is the shopping cart. Analyzing the functional requirements in context of user activity led to the recognition that the essence of the shopping cart was the list of products in the cart. User mental models separated “making my shopping cart” from “ordering,” which meant that people compartmentalized the activity of first selecting products and assembling their “shopping list” from the subsequent ordering process where purchasing could happen in a number of different ways.
A new shopping cart concept delivered a user-centric solution.
The differentiating innovation for the Ingram Micro design was a single shopping list that could be used for different actions by transitioning between multiple states:
In addition, the same list could be used post-order, such as when initiating an RMA process.
Once the cart was designed, the rest of the system fell into place.
The project also included reorganizing and converting the site’s static support and assistance content of over 970 HTML files into templated pages maintained by a content management system.
The e-commerce side was designed to integrate with the support and help content so that a person could navigate seamlessly and fluidly between both systems, allowing them to move from managing an order, to checking an order policy, and then directly to the information needed to change their financing arrangements.