Tailored App Experience:
Driving revenue for loyal app customers by personalizing the shopping journey
Williams-Sonoma, Inc
Client
Williams-Sonoma, Inc / In-House Design
Date
Fall 2024 - Summer 2025
My Role
Lead UX Designer for the Tailored App Experience across all five mobile apps under the Williams-Sonoma, Inc. umbrella: Pottery Barn, West Elm, Williams Sonoma, PB Kids, and PB Teen. Led end-to-end design through concept development, stakeholder alignment, prototyping, brand partnership, iterative design, developer collaboration, and QA.
Project Overview
With $150 million in annual revenue, millions of monthly active users, and average App Store ratings of 4.8 stars, the WSI family of mobile apps enjoys a deeply loyal customer base. These users are highly engaged, and our challenge was to further enhance their experience by delivering smarter, more personalized ways to shop while preserving the visual aesthetic that defines each brand.
The Tailored App Experience focused on optimizing the most visited areas of the apps, including the Home tab, Shop tab, and product detail pages, to help logged-in customers continue their shopping journey effortlessly. The initiative has been a significant success, with over 90% of revenue from the Home tab now driven by the tailored experience, a 20% increase in revenue from the Shop tab, and average order values nearly 30% higher on both the Home and Shop tabs. Overall, the experience has driven nearly a 6% boost in conversion across key flows, along with measurable gains in engagement, repeat purchases, and order value.
The initiative has been a significant success, with over 90% of revenue from the Home tab now driven by the tailored experience, a 20% increase in revenue from the Shop tab, and average order values nearly 30% higher on both the Home and Shop tabs.
The Challenge
Without A/B testing capabilities on mobile apps, introducing changes to high-traffic areas of the user journey carried inherent risk. Each brand within WSI has a strong identity anchored in lifestyle visuals and curated design. Adding functional, data-driven components ran the risk of compromising the brand's visual ethos.
The challenge was multifaceted: how do we introduce personalized components like recently viewed products or saved favorites without visually disrupting each brand's unique aesthetic? Could we build a modular framework that works across diverse customer bases—from the Pottery Barn shopper customizing a sectional to the Williams Sonoma customer building a wedding registry?
We also needed a design system that allowed for brand-specific visual adaptations while maintaining consistent functionality. All of this had to be implemented without negatively impacting KPIs like conversion rate, add-to-cart rate, cart abandonment, and return visits.
How do we introduce personalized components like recently viewed products or saved favorites without visually disrupting each brand's unique aesthetic?
Could we build a modular framework that works across diverse customer bases—from the Pottery Barn shopper customizing a sectional to the Williams Sonoma customer building a wedding registry?
Existing Home Page Experience
The previous home page of all apps in the umbrella displayed no personalization - frustrating repeat customers already deep into their shopping journey.
The Shop tabs in the apps contained a long list of super categories, but no way for customers to see categories or searches recently utilized.
Revisiting attribute selection
Data tells us many large purchases like custom furniture are considered for months, but the attribute selection process for those items was resetting after every visit.
Exploration and Iteration
There were many initial ideas that didn’t make it into production, including:
Notification-style banners that persist on the home screen
Custom pop-up drawers leading the customers back into their journey
Targeted categorical entry based on past purchases
Product entry derived from items in cart
The Solution
We implemented a cross-brand, modular design strategy that surfaced personalized content while maintaining design integrity. The initiative touched several key points in the customer journey:
Home Tab Enhancements: Introduced a new "Pick Up Where You Left Off" widget that surfaced recently viewed products and categories. This created a natural re-entry point for customers returning to the app.
Favorites Shortcut: Added direct access to "My Favorites" on the Home tab—previously buried within the account section—to boost visibility of this high-converting feature.
Shop Tab Personalization: Redesigned the Shop tab to display recent searches and recently viewed categories/products at the top, giving customers faster access to their interests.
Smart PDP Memory: Modified product detail pages to remember prior attribute selections (like fabric type, size, finish), streamlining decisions on long-considered purchases.
This work included deep stakeholder collaboration, rigorous Figma prototyping, and close work with engineering to validate feasibility and maintain brand fidelity across five distinct apps.
Results
Launched across brands between May and June 2025, the Tailored App Experience has delivered major wins. Personalized banners like "Pick Up Where You Left Off" outperformed static content, increasing conversion by nearly 6%. The reimagined Shop tab nearly doubled conversion for product discovery. Enhancements to PDP memory improved both ATC and conversion rates for high-consideration purchases. These changes not only drove revenue but also increased app stickiness, with higher engagement and order frequency among participating users.