Best Buy Canada

Koala Case Study

Koala is an in-house brand that sells bed-in-a-box mattresses. They also offer an entire collection of complimentary products like pillows, toppers, and foundations that are all compatible with each other.

The task was to launch the brand, and build a shopping experience for a new type of product that Best Buy has never carried before. So as a customer, I would like to understand the unique value props of Koala, and easily shop all of their products.

Gathering insights

We met with our stakeholders and went through an extensive research phase to get a sense of the competitive landscape and better understand their business objectives.

What we learned was that the popularity of bed-in-a-box has grown tremendously in the last few years because of its convenience. There's no need to visit a sales floor – you can order a mattress in the comfort of your own home, and it’s shipped to your door in a small, standard delivery box.

With furniture being one of Best Buy's highest performing growth categories, we now have the opportunity to be one of the few retailers in Canada who offer this product, along with the great customer experience that comes with it. In order to be successful, we need to help build brand awareness and create an experience that presents the entire product line to the customer.

Ideation

Kicking off the project

Working with Business Specialists, UX Architects, Content Strategists, and Copywriters, we had a kick-off meeting that revolved around one question: what’s the message that we want to communicate to customers?

It’s budget friendly – affordable prices with free shipping
It’s convenient – delivered to your doorstep and simple to set up
It’s risk-free – try it for 100 days and if you don’t love it, we’ll send you a refund

User flow

We then mapped out the user flow that a customer can go through if they wanted to find a Koala product on the website. We identified customers who would navigate through our category pages, use the Search feature, or land anywhere in the journey through SEO. This helped inform our decisions on where to place the right messaging, at the right time.

While working on this flow, we quickly realized that there was a need for a landing page. Because this is a new brand and a new product, the ultimate goal was to be as educational as possible. In order to communicate everything that Koala had to offer, we needed a centralized hub that conveyed all of this information. We also wanted to leverage high-quality content to build trust and confidence in the brand.

Solution

The landing page

For the customer, this is their introduction to the Koala brand. To build this experience, I used a number of different UI components to tell the story.

Feature Banner

Used to showcase the product with a rich background image and descriptive text. This is could be the first time that the customer interacts with the brand, and we want the primary message to quickly describe what Koala is.
Columned Content

Used to clearly communicate important information. In this case, it highlights Koala’s three main value props, which were originally defined in our kick-off meeting.
Text Block

Used to provide additional information along with a supporting image. This is an educational section that explains bed-in-a-box for those who might not understand what it is.
Story Banners

Used to tell a powerful story on the page with strong imagery. This section describes each product and allows the customer to explore the entire collection.

Finding the right product

We also built an intermediary path from the landing page to the product page with navigational components to help customers find the right size mattress that they’re looking for.

Shop By Size Component

Used to help narrow down the number of products on the page. It allows the customer to filter their results by mattress size.
Side Navigation

Used to navigate to other categories. This enables the customer to easily browse other Koala products.

Completing your collection

On each product page, we wanted to promote related Koala products and encourage customers to complete their bedroom.

Product Attachment Component

Used to recommend related products that the customer might also be interested in.

Results

Since the launch, Koala mattresses make up a large portion of the total sales in the Mattresses department. While Best Buy offers hundreds of different brands, Koala is already one of the highest purchased brands in the category – only behind specialty brands like Sealy.

Customers who end up hitting the landing page are more likely to make a purchase. However, traffic to this page is relatively low due to the limited number of touchpoints.

There is high engagement with the “Complete your collection” component that was built on the product display page, which lead to an increased product attachment rate for foundations.