Ecommerce for consumer electronic devices

Google

The situation

In 2015, Google dramatically expanded their hardware offering. They originally just sold just Android phones and Chromebook laptops. Now adding watches, audio, video streaming, and new brands like smart homes with Nest and gaming with their Stadia lineups.

Google’s Hardware product team needed a dedicated e-commerce site for their suite of consumer electronic devices. Previously, electronic devices lived on a small sub-section of the Google Play store, underneath a large amount of Google and third-party software. This meant the hardware products were buried in a much larger store, not getting nearly the recognition they needed. So, they brought on the internal Google Brand Studio to create this site, and I served as lead UX writer for this project.

The challenges

  • Had to be easy to maintain when ownership transitioned from my Brand Studio team to the Devices product team. But unclear when this handoff would occur.

  • Wide variety of product means large amount of stakeholders with unique goals for each team.

  • Inconsistent content meant inconsistent terminology between devices, causing confusion for how similar functions occur.

  • Product roadmap introducing new concepts for Google that already existed in the industry. Example: Extended warranties (3rd party offering). Needed to inform buyers and get them interested in new offerings without diluting the Google brand.

The approach

  • Triad of interaction designer, information architect, and content strategist

  • Extended warranties were a new offering that Google product owners wanted to promote. It involved a third-party company to maintain those warranties.

  • We wanted to get buyers to be informed and interested in this offering without diluting the Google brand. I partnered with a dedicated information architect to carefully map out the flows.

  • We aligned the moments in the customer journey with key messaging modules to explain the key benefits of an extended warranty. But we ensured there wasn’t too much pressure on the buyer, so that they would still complete their purchase.

The solution

  • Clear guidelines for terminology and tone. Enthusiasm as a core messaging tenet. From inspirational homepage copy to relatable tech specs.

  • Consistent copy docs with dedicated copy editing time with other content strategists.

  • Created custom CMS with engineering partners. Created content templates for homepage, site nav, detail pages, and more.

  • Product marketers on the Hardware team could easily manage this CMS, especially as new product lines or new teammates joined the team.

Results and key learnings

  • Smooth hand-off with little need for follow-up. Repeatable UX writing and copy editing process for Product team, with sample milestones for new team to adopt

  • Google Store still sees great success to this day, maintaining the original structure we created as Google has expanded even more into the hardware space since 2015.

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