First Chair Loyalty Program
First Chair is Burton’s customer loyalty program. Burton customers can join the program for free, and the program rewards them with benefits and exclusive offers.
The goals of the program are to incentivize customers to make additional purchases, attract new members, and increase Burton’s annual revenue.
The Team:
Morgan Maltby: UX Designer
John Brown: Art Director
Emma Lechner: Product Owner
Carly Olson and Krystal Manganaro: Program Strategy and Operations
The Opportunity
At the core, loyalty programs reward customers for engaging with a brand on a consistent basis. In return, the brand is rewarded with a reliable customer base, who consistently make more than one purchase per year.
Problem Statement:
Burton did not have a way to incentivize customers to make additional purchases nor reward them for their brand loyalty.
Program Goals
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#1 Drive Customer Retention
The First Chair Loyalty program rewards customers with points that can be used to unlock exclusive offers and benefits.
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#2 Attract New Customers
The program aims to attract new customers by providing perks and benefits to begin their journey as new Burton customers.
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#3 Generate Revenue
As a result of driving customer retention and attracting new business, the program will ultimately boost the bottom line.
Business Challenges
Resourcing/Prioritization
There are always competing priorities at Burton. Our development team is small and agile, and the company decided that the Loyalty program was our top priority. Therefore, both the development team and the creative teams needed to shuffle around their other work in order to properly prioritize this project.
No Customer Service Training Plan
Our Customer Service team fields thousands of calls a day from customers all over the world. They need to have a structured training plan in order to predict customer concerns and calls specific to the Loyalty program. The Guides themselves also need to have a robust understanding of the Loyalty program.
Pilot Program
A pilot program was originally launched but failed to meet our changing business goals. We needed to decide how we were going to transition the pilot program into the mainstream Loyalty program.
Product User:
A leader who continuously seeks self-improvement and does not need external validation from others.
Snowboarding is a big part of their identity
Is a leader and influences their network, and are very social
Looking for the latest and greatest gear to enhance their outdoor experience
They seek individuality and performance support within their products
Engage in: day hiking, mountain biking, trekking, snowboarding, skiing
Quantitative Research
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79%
Of consumers say that loyalty programs should provide immediate benefits to maintain their loyalty.
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68%
Of consumers agree that their loyalty is more difficult to maintain than ever before
User Needs
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Easy Sign Up
Our users need an intuitive sign-up process that clearly explains the benefits of the program and connects to their burton account.
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Clear Benefits
The benefit to the user needs to be clear and concise. There should be no second-guessing why they should become a member.
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Rad Incentives
The user needs to be incentivized with unique and personal benefits. The benefits should reflect the brand values and foster a deeper sense of connection with the user.
Competitor Analysis
Vans
creates a sense of community outside of the commercial exchange
allows for users to actively gain points outside of just purchases
The North Face
simplicity and ease of use
personalized email and marketing recommendations
Exploring Design Treatments
Since there were no web-based programs launched like this before, we experimented with several different ways to visually display the information while staying within the existing architecture of the website.
Requirement 1:
Visually represent the user’s point value and show how many points they need to earn until they increase to the next tier.
In our final design, we ended up going with replicating a lift ticket pass. We wanted the design to be visual and fun, but also represent the sport, and include a “membership feel”
Requirement 2:
Explain the different tiers, corresponding benefits, and point values to reach each tier. Our original design for this table used the commonly known mountain trail level markers. However, we quickly learned that this was only applicable in North America, so in order to globalize the design, we simplified the table.
Requirement 3:
We needed to make the sign-up process as frictionless and easy as possible. Thankfully, the user’s account information can be reused upon selecting signup. This allowed for a one-click signup experience.
The Final Solution
Account Section
The user needs to be able to see their status or be able to enroll from the account section.
This design needed to live in the existing architecture of our account section.
Landing Page
The user needs an engaging and informative landing page that takes into account the regional differences of the program across the globe.
This landing page was designed within our content module system.
FAQs/Terms and Conditions
The FAQs and Terms and Conditions page needs to be integrated into our existing help page structure. The pages need to be easily accessible from various points throughout the user journey.
Exciting Results
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70,000 global members signed up in the first 3 months.
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Average Order Value (AOV) is about $100 higher for Loyalty Members.
