Drink Finder

Role: Primary UX/UI

Core Team: Digital Customer Experience Manager, UX Designer, UX Researchers, Product Manager

Hypothesis: Customers will expand their repertoire by ordering a base drink they have never ordered before

Testing: User research, comparative study with other discovery features, A/B testing

Starbucks has a massive menu–most customers barely scratch the surface. Currently, the menus in the app and website are great for customers that know what they’re looking for, but they also need a digital tool when they want to try something new.

Previous Research & Observations:

• On average, customers are interested in trying something new about once every five visits

• The Starbucks menu is huge and difficult for customers to understand (especially new customers)

• Most customers discover new drinks from conversations with friends or baristas

After reviewing initial ideas with a group of customers, it was clear that they preferred a guided experience that felt like a human conversation. We also learned what drink qualities would be most useful to help them narrow down their options.

Our testers didn’t mind answering a few questions, but they didn’t want to have to work too hard. For that reason, we decided to show drink results after answering each question, so there was no obligation to complete a lengthy quiz if they didn’t want to.

We launched the Drink Finder A/B test with an ingress point on the web homepage and found some very promising results. The engagement rate was 6.8% for customers that saw it, which exceeds any of the other cards on the home page.

The Drink Finder was especially useful for new customers. In addition to giving us a 10% boost in customers signing up for a Starbucks Rewards account, new customers were 1.65x more likely to make a purchase in their first session.