AEO LOYALTY PROGRAM
Testing a New Digital Loyalty Experience
Project Goal
American Eagle had had the same loyalty program in place for almost a decade. The marketing team wanted to refresh and relaunch the loyalty experience from the ground up. The business goal of the relaunch of the AEO Loyalty program was to create an integrated program that was built to be digital-first with benefits that engage customers and drive brand loyalty. I was part of a team of UX designers and researchers that redesigned the AEO Loyalty program by reconceptualizing the program’s digital user experience and tested each part of the new program from the concept to the usability of any digital experiences.
Research Team
4 UX Researchers/Designers
My focus: user research and design for the Account and entire Mobile App experience
Research Approach
Use remote usability testing to test the experience through the design iterations of the project:
Concept test low fidelity prototypes
Usability test medium to high fidelity prototypes
Post-launch test the final experience
Research Methods
15+ usability tests run throughout the entire project, run as remote unmoderated usability tests via usertesting.com with specific tasks.
Breakdown of program components based on business requirements
Testing the Account Experience
What should the hierarchy of information be on the user’s Loyalty account page?
In our first designs of the experience, we put information about the user’s loyalty status and program benefits at the top of the page.
Through usability testing, we found that this pushed the points and credits earned sections further down the page, sections the users would be checking most frequently. I recommended we switched that content to the top of the page.
What information about their points and rewards is most useful to the customer and at what moments?
Due to technical constraints, any points or credits earned by the user were marked as pending for a period of time before they were turned into rewards. The business stakeholders wanted to expose this breakdown of pending versus available points to users in order to explain this delay in getting a reward.
I was concerned that this would add an extra level of information the user didn't need and would confuse the users. I confirmed this hypothesis through several rounds of user testing. I was able to use those findings to convince the business to remove pending points and credits from the Account page and focus on information the user wants to know the most — the status of their reward.
Results
The AEO mobile app has been performing extremely well since the launch of the Loyalty program, with millions of new users, a 50% increase in app downloads, and over a 100% increase in revenue and visitors compared to last year.