Orders and Returns
Management, Tracking, and More
Project Details
For: thredUP
A fashion resale platform
Role: Product Design
Date: December 2020
About the Project
Much like my Clean Out project, if you look under the hood you’ll see that thredUP’s orders and returns are surprisingly complicated. There are pending orders, bundled orders, Goody Box orders, and more. Returns don’t correspond to orders, but are created and tracked separately. So my primary goal was to have really thoughtful information architecture serving as the backbone of the project. Secondarily, I had the chance to rethink the layout of the entire user account.
Pending Orders
Previously, we added a new page into the account each time we rolled out a new purchasing option. But after validating these features, they needed a permanent home. My goal was to combine everything into one section, because the account menu was becoming disorganized and difficult to scan.
I started by adding a “Pending Orders” tab to the page to display bids and Auto-Buys (automatic purchases of items if they drop from someone else’s cart). But after conducting interviews, I found that users don’t see these types of orders in that way.
“I get “pending” when I think about it for a second, but if I’m checking to see if my Auto-Buy went through, I’m looking for that specifically.”
Auto-Buy user
The feedback led me to simply display pending orders in the main orders tab. This way, all orders were arranged sequentially regardless of which type of order it was. I also added a dynamic notification in the account dropdown to give the user a quick rundown of their status.
Pending Orders Edits
Streamlining Returns
My goal for the returns update was to reduce confusion (and customer service contacts) arising from several known pain points. I surfaced final sale items that were ineligible for returns for easy reference. And I reorganized the entire interface to display returns in their own top-level record, rather than nesting them inside the original orders page.
Return Details & Starting a Return
Creating a Template
This project also gave me the opportunity to create a template to visually unify all the account pages. To that end, I created designs that were flexible enough to be reused across account settings, selling and management subscription management pages, and beyond.
Account Pages
We're stilling rolling out some of the final features of this update; results and future iterations are coming soon!