Zola Wedding Albums
Building an album customization experience to match industry expectations and provide differentiated value for existing Zola couples.
My Role: Product Designer, Researcher (2021)
Additional Team Members: Product Manager, Business Analyst, Engineering Lead, 4 Engineers
Timing: 2.5 months design & research, 3 months engineering
Business opportunity
Wedding albums represent a significant & high-margin opportunity that is a natural extension of Zola's Invites & Paper business. The COVID-19 pandemic dampened the growth of our Invites sales, given far fewer weddings were occurring with large groups.
Approximately 30% of couples purchase their album through their photographer, while 70% did it themselves via an online tool. The average couple will spend $200-$300 on their “main” photo album and between $50-$150 on “secondary” photo books, generally as gifts for family.
Survey data showed 70% of Zola couples expressed an interest in purchasing a wedding photo album. The overall impact in 2021 is estimated to almost double our current Gross Placed Sales.
User needs and problems
The user group we focused on were couples who are interested in self-purchasing and designing a wedding album, willing to pay ~$200-$500. From survey data, we learned the customization process overall feels overwhelming and time consuming. Specifically, couples were looking for design advice and help choosing photos. To learn more about the current state of the industry, we did the following:
Competitive
analysis
With around 14 major online album vendors already out there, our product manager focused on analyzing the physical attributes (like cover materials, paper types, and printing methods) while I focused on the digital features (layout templates, image editing, ability to preview, etc.).
Surveys
I created and sent a survey to current Zola couples who had previously purchased albums, which gave us qualitative insights into their critical pain points.
Couples felt the overall process was difficult, with the notion of “do it for me” standing out as a theme to dig into.
UX guiding principles
I created the following lightweight design principles to use based on these pain points to keep the team grounded while creating the experience, based on the qualitative and quantitative feedback and data we had.
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Do as much of the “grunt work” as we can
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Make the process feel simple, fun, and fast
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Guide, but don’t be prescriptive
Research and findings
I spoke to 49 brides over the course of 7 studies in 10 weeks.
Each week I set objectives for the study, read out the findings to our larger stakeholder group of about 15, updated designs based on the feedback, and provided recommendations to the team for next steps.
Where did I start?
Hypotheses to test
The concept of a quiz to star the process helps personalize in a lightweight way and reduces the anxiety of not knowing where to start
Encouraging couples to rank and organize their photos before seeing them in the album will result in spending less time editing
Couples have favorite photos they want to take up more space in the album
Showing progress helps couples feel like they’re moving closer to the finish line and motivates them to complete their album
“[On Progress] This is a morale booster for me. I can see how much work I’m doing and how much more work I have to do. It’s chipping away at the idea that this is so daunting.”
Major insights
👍 Couples respond best to recommendations that are backed by social proof
🖼️ Couples have a particular layout style in mind and it’s an easy choice for them to make
👏 Showing progress helped motivate couples to design their album and provided a way to make the process feel less intimidating.
💒 Even when done manually, categorizing photos by parts of the day helped provided structure that made users feel more confident in their choices.
📸 After answering the personalization questions and landing on the auto-filled album, couples wanted to edit crops and occasionally change layouts. ~75% of the book achieved the look they desired
💡 Using contextual, bite-sized tips within the flow helped establish Zola as trusted experts without bombarding the user during onboarding or burying info in a long list of tips.
“I felt good at the end of [choosing my photos]! I felt super accomplished. Especially given that it was daunting getting started, how on earth am I going to choose from all these photos. Once I had your structure I felt really good. And it was nice to relive the moment too, looking back and going oh this day was so fun!”
What differentiates our MVP?
Notion of Progress
Providing a framework to help users both tactically and psychologically finish their book by breaking tasks down into discrete chunks and celebrating small victories along the way.
“Intelligent” Autofill
Letting the user choose their layout style, offering advice on number of photos to use, and choosing highlights provides a way to put minimal effort in to see a customized autofill.
MVP solution
Given we had a 3 month deadline for engineering to launch, the final MVP needed to be descoped from the ideal state that we thought we’d have time for. After collaborating with my engineering counterparts and business leads, we were able to strategically add feature “enhancements” to our backlog, while still maintaining the integrity of the product that we set out to build.
Check out the prototype for the MVP below, and see the live experience here with lots of additional bells and whistles.
Outcomes
Albums yielded $4M in Y1 at 65% margins, exceeding our revenue goals. We also saw a higher percentage than anticipated of users start and purchase their albums the same day, where anecdotally we heard customization can take months to complete.
We even made a commercial about it, watch below!