Buying a car is one of the most expensive purchases that people ever make. Historically, the car purchasing experience has been an incredibly complex process involving annoying dealership visits, negotiations and time investments.

In comparison to other retail categories, car companies have made a slower push towards e-commerce. Customers have gotten used to the convenience, accessibility, and efficiency offered by online purchasing experiences.

The Simplified Shopping project came to FordLabs with the goal of upgrading the e-commerce experience for Ford customers. In addition to improving the overall customer experience, our project also had three primary objectives from a business perspective:

• Increase lead conversion rate 

• Increase lead revenue value 

• Increase accessory take rates

We went through an iterative process of research, narrowing scope and running experiments. Over time, the team launched a test site that carved out traffic from ford.com and put customers through a differentiated online shopping experience.

We made significant changes to critical surfaces that impact customer conversion rates. Most notably, we focused on the digital car configurator where visitors can build their ideal vehicle online.

Additionally, we experimented with completely new features and product flows that optimized the experience for customers. Some of these included:

• Recommendation quiz to help customers identify the right vehicle trim for them 

• Feature nudges to help inform add-on options 

• Optimized feature catalogs

• Feature filters

• …and more!

We were able to track the outcomes of our work with real customer data through the test site. Some of the results included:

• 38% increase in lead conversion rates 

• 5% increase in accessory take rates

• 22% increase in lead revenue value

• > 50% of users opted for additional features with nudges

• 52% increase in selection rates for vehicle options with changed defaults 

These results enabled us to become a unique asset to the marketing & sales organization. While the site we built did not fully replace the existing ford.com experience, it became a testing ground for Ford digital teams to explore hypotheses, identify insights and inform their product roadmap.