ShopDisney App Drops
Improving the e-commerce experience for limited high-demand products.
Problem: No Way to Handle High-Demand Releases
While working as a product designer for the shopDisney team at Disney, I noticed the website had no system for handling high-demand releases or “drops”. Following some customer feedback found online from hardcore shopDisney collector groups, there was a lot of frustration in getting specific items. One major product line with these issues was the “Minnie Mouse: The Main Attraction” collection where products would sell out in less than 30 seconds, and be put on eBay(and bought!) for more than 5x the price.
Retail price of the Minnie ears was $29.95. There are countless eBay listings with a 5x markup.
“How can guest frustrations be reduced when it comes to limited edition product ‘drops’?”
Guests Attitudes
Using insights from the Market Research team and guest feedback from various online groups, it was clear that there was a demand for these products, and a demand for a fair way to attain them. The current system was flawed and lead to many frustrated customers. ShopDisney drops are mostly targeted towards the "Fan-It-Alls”, “Premium Indulger” and “Curators of Cool”(Influencers) types which account for 39% of the consumer product base, but account for most of the spending as they are more likely to buy a complete collection of items.
Competitive Analysis
E-Commerce Trends in handling high-demand releases
It was clear that our platform needed a way to handle high-demand releases, so I saw what current e-commerce websites and apps did in handling their drops. One of the most well known apps was SNKRS by Nike, their process for handling popular and limited-edition sneaker releases which did a “draw” type system that gave users a limited amount of time to “enter” and their entry would result in either a “win” or “lose”. This method allowed users to get frustrated at the quantity rather than the technical system, and encourage them to play again for the next release.
Other limited high-demand e-commerce systems I looked at were ticket buying websites. These allow a virtual queue for users to wait their turn to buy the tickets they wanted, and had clear signifiers for when they should expect their turn.
Burning Man website
StubHub Website
Early Concept Feedback
To get my teammates on board with the idea for a drop system, I prototyped a few examples of what the system could be like. The team decided to go with the virtual queue style as it would be more beneficial for all involved. It could work for releases regardless of the demand status and signing up for early notifications could gauge how much traffic the site would receive on the day of the drop, helping tech with the issue of traffic. Guests would be able to clearly see if they are able to purchase their product or not, and any frustrations would be attributed to the amount of guests trying to buy the product, as opposed to the technical system and website itself.
Early Designs
Product Draw
The first idea was to do the Nike SNKRS app “draw style”. Users would be prompted to enter at a certain time and then their result(a win or loss) would be drawn allowing them to purchase the products.
Product Queue
The second concept was a virtual queue for the guest’s turn to purchase the product. The shopDisney team went with this idea as it would be beneficial to have a way to gauge consumer interest beforehand, and it gives users a clear idea of when they can expect to purchase their items. Virtual queue concepts and Disney go hand and hand, as with the success of the “Rise of the Resistance” queue system in Disney Parks.
App Concept Designs
Reflection and Impact
This was a project I really pushed for at my time at Disney. As a lover of buying shoes and concerts, I am always fond of effective systems that allow fans to attain their dream items fairly. Seeing some of the comments among Disney collectors really struck with me and I wanted to know how to design a system to ease their frustrations. I would in the future, like to see the impact of the application and how we can keep improving it to handle high volume drops and traffic on shopDisney.
