Overhaul Multi League Purchases & Profile Selection
complete
Bobby Ray
Allow customer to check all leagues that they wish to purchase from main league directory before adding to cart (instead of adding each league separately, which can be exhausting if selecting several leagues).
Or just don’t redirect to cart after “add to cart” order, so customers can’t keep easily adding.
Ron Pelkey
Makes sense to me Dave. Thanks for the update.
Dave Rapin
complete
Since this issue was created there have been several major changes:
- We are now automatically selecting a profile if the user only has one profile.
- We are immediately prompting the user to select a profile (if they have more than one or none) and fill out required fields instead of needing to read / digest the cart and click the information required links.
- Clubs can now reduce the number of questions / information required for curler profiles drastically, further streamlining the checkout process if they opt to.
With these changes, I think we have greatly simplified the process for most curlers. For the occasional curler who is selecting 4+ items and has multiple profiles, this is probably still a fair bit of back and forth, but at this point I hesitate to further complicate the registration process to address this edge case (which is still perfectly functional). It's also worth noting that many users with multiple profiles are registering on behalf of someone they are not a legal guardian for and thus are invalidating the waivers, which is something we need to work to minimize and make sure staff understand.
Curling Club Development
Thanks Dave Rapin. The case that is becoming more common (because we are recommending such to clubs as a good business practice) is to offer enrolment 2-3 times per season into the same league (as opposed to only once, in the fall).
At my home club, I have to register three times to play in one league (once for the fall schedule, once for the winter schedule, and once for the spring schedule). If a user is doing this once every 8 weeks, there is no problem. If they just want to get it over with and register for the season at once, they have to add to cart 3x per league.
Can leagues be add-ons inside of other leagues? Can I register for Tuesday Night Men's League - Fall, and - in the process also "check" Tuesday Night Men's League - Winter and Tuesday Night Men's League - Spring? Can there be a parent league and sub leagues?
~ Bobby
Dave Rapin
Curling Club Development Hmm, this is actually something I want to address eventually. Not having leagues as addons specifically, but rather finding a more streamlined way to deal with semester / trimester leagues. There are several challenges, not just when it comes to simplified registration but also in how multi-league discounts are applied. For example, I register for one fall, one spring, and one full season league, how should a multi-league discount behave?
I've found clubs to be all over the map on how they price these things too... they aren't all necessarily the same price or participating in the same discounts. Also, when dividing a league into 2-3, these are essentially separate leagues, in that the round robins and standings are fresh each time. No matter how this is designed, I feel like it'll miss the mark for half of the clubs doing it.
Dave Rapin
Curling Club Development There's actually a really simple way we could streamline your issue (registering for multiple trimesters of a league), that feels kinda hacky, but maybe it's not so bad.
As long as the leagues share the exact same name except for "Fall, Winter, Spring", we could add a "Follow-up League Suggestions" feature. The system finds other matching leagues (same name excluding fall, winter, spring), and asks you if also want to add any of them to your cart, assigning the same curler profile. So basically just like having addon checkboxes.
So if the club offers:
- Monday Night Open - Fall
- Monday Night Open - Winter
- Monday Night Open - Spring
And I add "Monday Night Open - Fall" to my cart, after I assign a curler the order item screen will have a list of suggested leagues with checkboxes for "Monday Night Open - Winter" and "Monday Night Open - Spring".
So the club is creating a grouping just by using the same names, instead of explicitly grouping leagues together (which is annoying, adds toggles, and would need to happen every season). The matching would be case insensitive, and strip spacing, dashes, colons, etc. So that "monday night open: fall" would match with "Monday Night Open - Winter" etc.
Dave Rapin
under review
Dave Rapin
planned
I've been mulling this over and am planning on an overhaul to the purchase flow for next season. Instead of taking the user directly to the cart when they click "Add to cart", I'm going to prompt them to fill out the required fields (including assigning a curler profile). Once done there will be an intermediary screen asking if they want to add more items or continue to the cart. When assigning a curler profile for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. items the system will assume they are using the same one as earlier, but with an option to change it (to another existing one or by creating a new one).
I think this will achieve (A) a more straightforward multiple item purchases and (B) more streamlined curler assignment. It will overall feel more "wizard" like (if you know what I mean). A step by step, here's what's next approach.
Our data shows that most curlers only purchase one item in a checkout. But this is at least partially due to some of them not being aware that they can add more than one thing to the cart, thus creating multiple checkouts. Explicitly asking them as outline above should improve this.
This should also reduce curler profile duplicates. At least those on the same account that were created out of confusion.
Dave Rapin
We're also now automatically selecting their curler profile if they only have one and it's eligible (meets age / gender / other restrictions). This should further streamline the process.
Dave Rapin
Easy enough to implement, but I think it'll need a bit more nuance. Some sort of interstitial screen asking them if they're done and want to go to the checkout or continue adding items. Otherwise after the click the "Add to cart" or "Register" button it might seem like nothing is happening (so they do it again, etc.).
The reasoning behind the current behaviour is that we didn't know whether or not to expect the majority of curlers would purchase just one thing or multiple things. We err'd on the side of most curlers purchasing just one thing, and so there's no additional friction, they go straight to the cart. I should be able to look at the data though and find out how right or wrong we were on that assumption by looking at what our average curlers actually do.
Bobby Ray
Dave Rapin: maybe the best of both worlds is to allow multiple items to be checked, but still when you click "add to cart" or "register" it continues to redirect to cart (so user knows something has happened).
Dave Rapin
Bobby Ray: Checkboxes aren't really going to work for all of our clubs. Some have a lot of leagues (and I mean A LOT). So the user needs to be able to easily parse / search for the league(s) they are interested in. Overall it's just going to be a more cluttered screen with checkboxes.
I think a good goal would be to emulate Amazon's flow as must as possible. They've spent millions on UXP and it's a familiar process for many of our users (more familiar than any other online ordering process I'd argue). It's actually a pretty good fit IMO, except for the whole multiple curler profiles things (sort of like shipping addresses I guess?).
Joseph Caruso
Great point there should be a simpler and less exhausting way to select multiple leagues without jumping back and forth!