RESEARCH

Who are Wayfair Suppliers?

Suppliers are independent companies that partner with Wayfair to sell their home-related products on the Wayfair website. They manage their products, and subsequently their product promotions, through a supplier-specific website called Partner Home. There are different levels of support for suppliers who participate in promotions: suppliers who are supported by external Wayfair account managers (Managed Suppliers) and suppliers who manage their own accounts internally (Desk Suppliers). Nonetheless, both types of suppliers have a common need for data to understand the value that promotions bring to their business.

Competitive Analysis Takeaways

We researched several of Wayfair’s direct competitors, including Shopify, Walmart, and Amazon. These competitors offer meaningful data on their promotions dashboard and ways to analyze this data. The top examples surface important metrics, data visualizations, and include reporting capabilities. Furthermore, while competitors’ reporting and analytics pages are located separately from their promotions page, they provide entry points into these reports and pair these with data relevant to promotions.

PROBLEM FRAMING

Suppliers want to understand and evaluate performance data

Desk suppliers have a clear disadvantage when it comes to understanding and evaluating their promotional performance. They must ‘experiment’ with their catalog to test promotional variations, while managed suppliers can consult with their account managers to craft the best promotions. Desk suppliers need additional resources, such as updated help articles or a Wayfair point of contact, for further assistance. Nonetheless, despite this disparity in promotions management, both managed and desk suppliers need greater data transparency within the promotions platform.

Suppliers must see the positive impact of promotions

Managed and desk suppliers differ in how they analyze the success of their promotions. Managed suppliers use both internal tools (data analytics) and external resources (performance reports) to determine if their campaigns performed well and if future adjustments should be made. In comparison, desk suppliers cannot attribute increased sales to their participation in promotions without their own external analysis. Both types of suppliers desire more data to be readily available within the promotions experience.

FINAL DESIGN

Updated Promotions Experience

The updated promotions experience includes performance metrics and visualizations of data that helps suppliers determine the success of their promotional events. Through this experience, both desk and managed suppliers can analyze their promotional data to increase their company’s revenue and sales.

Cards of Performance Metrics

From our interviews, we found that both managed and desk suppliers were most concerned about the promotional metrics of wholesale revenue (the total revenue made during the promotion), products sold, sales lift (the amount of increase in sales during the promotion), and average discount (the average discount given for products in that promotion). 

They also wanted to know how other similar suppliers are performing in these metrics so that they have a point for comparison, which would help them change their current promotion or adjust future strategy. We surfaced this feature below the metric numbers as “percentage lower/higher than similar suppliers.”

Graphs of Products Sold and Wholesale Revenue

We highlighted the value of promotions visually by adding a line graph including 30 days before and after the promotion period for the Products Sold and Wholesale Revenue metrics. These graphs would showcase the amount of lift that occurs during the promotion, which highlights the benefit of supplier participation. By giving suppliers data about the positive impact that promotions have on their revenue and sales, there will be greater incentive for them to participate in future promotions.

Charts of Best-Selling Classes

These charts showcase a supplier’s top five best-selling classes of their products (i.e. couches, tables, chairs) by wholesale revenue and products sold, which helps them understand which are most in demand. This information is especially helpful if suppliers would like to increase their revenue and sales in their current promotion, and it also gives insight on which product classes receive the most attention from customers.

NEXT STEPS

Additional Usability Testing

Once we completed the high fidelity designs of the updated promotions experience, we performed usability testing with four suppliers. Due to time constraints, we could not test with more suppliers to gain robust insights, so further testing is needed to validate the efficacy of our designs.