Customer Experience & Testing
Beacon: A journey in data and analysis
Beacons are devices that communicate with a shopper’s smartphone with the goal of improving the in-store shopping experience. When placed in a store, beacons use Bluetooth technology to detect nearby smartphones and send them media such as ads, coupons, or supplementary product information.
At Walgreens, we used this technology to test the balance between an intrusive ad and an acceptable level of interaction for an in-store setting. We gained valuable knowledge about dwell time in store, customer journeys throughout the store, and basket size at checkout. We targeted around 20,000 users in test stores around Gainesville, FL, running this campaign over six months while changing creative numerous times based on the data received.
During the period of these tests, beacon technology was still fairly new. The future of beacons at Walgreens is not focused on pushing to the customer, but pushing information to our beauty consultants, pharmacists, and cashiers to help make the Walgreens customer shopping experience more personalized.
The Beginning
Beacon was comprised of a three-funnel system: push notifications must be turned on, Bluetooth enabled, and the Walgreens App must be installed. Below is an example of the flow a user would experience. Our ideal process would lead the user directly into the app, but the current technology gave us the opportunity for an interstitial image to lead up to what would be offered inside the app.
Involvement
CX Designer
Client
Walgreens
Date
2017
Onboarding
A series of onboarding screens were created to help customers adopt the system. These screens were represented inside the app, as well as pushed through the beacon system.
General to Personalized
We began with general messaging, but slowly started to personalize over the six-month experiment. Below are some examples of some of the personalized assets.
