Ashish Sharma
Company:
Full time with Blinkit
Year:
2022
Time period:
2 weeks
The brief was simple - redesign the out of stock widget on cart. But before touching anything, we needed to understand exactly what was broken and why.
My role
I owned this project end to end.
> Research - understanding why the existing widget was failing
> Ideation and iterations - from problem diagnosis to final widget design
> Working with engineering to spec and ship it
Two weeks. One designer. A feature that was already live — but silently broken.
Old experience
The feature existed. Users just couldn't find it, couldn't trust it - and when they did find it, the recommendations were wrong.
Three problems in one screen:
> "Find similar items" button was invisible — buried and easy to miss entirely
> Alternatives hidden in a bottom sheet — required an extra tap, adding unnecessary friction
> Poor recommendations from our Algorithm
The numbers confirmed it:
Overall 15% of users sees OOS widget
> Only 9% of users with an OOS item looked for an alternative
> Of those, only 10% added something
> Overall widget conversion — 0.8%
The fix wasn't about adding new features. It was about making what existed actually work.
Out of 15% of the total cart which has Out Of Stock (OOS) items
> 75% of the cart which has OOS item have only 1 OOS item in the cart
> 16% of the cart which has OOS items have 2 OOS items in the cart
> 5% of the cart which has OOS items have 3 OOS items in the cart
> 2% of the cart which has OOS items have 4 OOS items in the cart
👉 It gives an idea of how many items New OOS widget should accommodate
OOS item suggestion
> 25% OOS items have no suggestions
> Out of 25% OOS item, 57% of OOS items are from Fruits & Vegetables category
Through customer calls, valuable qualitative insights were gathered as follows:
> 60% (8/14) customers were not aware of the OOS item alternative feature on the cart
> 30% (4/14) customers found suggestion in the bottom sheet of the OOS widget irrelevant
> 10% (2/14) customers did not need out of stock item then
👉 An interesting insight is that 10% of users encountered the OOS widget because of items added 1 or more days ago, which they no longer need in their new cart
To validate the third point, the data from the system confirmed it
In 15% of overall cart with OOS item
> for 3% carts, items were added two days back
> for 7% carts, items were added in the same day
> for 2% carts, items were added in the last hour & same session
Our primary research validate the thesis that customers aren’t utilising the feature because they aren’t aware of the feature and those that are aware didn’t find the right alternatives. To solve for this we decided to make the options available to the user more prominent to simplify discovery and improve the alternative suggestion logic
2nd order benefits locked with the approach
Problem left to solve
How to showcase alternatives upfront in the cart and allow user to add and explore those items.
Iterations for the upfront alternatives
“Users usually remember their OOS items in their cart”
Given users are able to recollect their OOS items we opted for a simpler UX with minimal to no learning curve while ensuring minimal usage of cart real estate
Video
> Now, customers are shown alternatives on cart, 3% add the alternative
> There is a 0.4% increase in orders. ₹1.2 increase in Average order value
Increase in cart Conversion:
Up by 0.4% ❤️
Average order value:
Up by ₹1.2 ❤️
Addition from widget:
3% ❤️
Revenue increase:
1.8 cr monthly❤️
Sorting order of the OOS items
Latest OOS item will be visible at the end of the stack to maintain the mental model consistency in the cart
Sorting order of the suggestions
While “Item 1” could have multiple suggestions, we wanted to highlight one suggestion of each item first so that users know that alternatives are available for all items. This improves discoverability of all items rather than only item1 being used with multiple suggestions as users might not scroll entirely.
After addition logic
When a user adds a suggested item to their cart, it remains listed in the suggestion section, marked as "added." This helps the user easily associate to the newly added item while preserving the visibility of their original decision
Two edge cases worth solving.
1. Added suggestions are invisible in the main cart
When a user adds an alternative from the widget, it lands in the main cart — but looks identical to every other item. There's no way to tell it came from a suggestion. If the user wants to remove it, they can't distinguish it from their original items.
2. Location change causes duplicate additions
If a user changes their delivery location, an OOS item that was removed can automatically reappear in the cart — even if the user already added an alternative for it. This creates a confusing state where both the original and the replacement are in the cart.
Thanks for reading 😊
