Sport Clips Digital Design + Delivery
With approximately 1,900 locations nationwide, Sport Clips has established itself as the leader in boys' and men's haircuts. With a personalized and efficient in-store experience, clients can walk in, catch a game, get a fresh cut, and get back to their day.
We partnered with Sport Clips to design of a convenient multi-platform digital experience. One-touch scheduling, a dynamic wait time tracker, data-fueled personalization and branded moments of delight bring the classic Sport Clips feel to the brand’s digital ecosystem. Frictionless booking and exceptional customer service continues to boost engagement and reduce walk-outs.
The Ask
Design and implement robust mobile-first solution, validated via user research, that harnesses actionable data-fueled insights, to support strategic road mapping, digital experience design, and technical development.
TIMELINE: 12 MONTHS
The Process Deep Dive
Empathize & Define
Sport Clips was in the middle of a brand refresh and new campaign launch. Our task was to look more-deeply at the experience itself, then surface actionable insights that could both inform our omni-channel recommendations and ladder up to broader marking initiatives.
Activities:
Stakeholder + SME In-Depth Interviews
Ride-Alongs + Salon Ethnographies
Competitive + Comparative Market Analysis
Current-State Heuristic Evaluation + Data Analysis
Foundational Journey Mapping
Concept & Design
Research told us that focusing our thinking on the “Precision Player” customer segment, and the stylists would yield the highest return on investment, while moving the needle for our KPIs. With both the client team and actual customers, we ideated, tested, refined and prioritized critical features for launching a “Minimum Lovable Product”.
Activities:
Facilitated Cross-Disciplinary Product Visioning and Strategy Workshops
Journey Map Refinement
Data Architecture
Information Architecture Design
Tree Testing
Prototype Design + Validation Testing
Design Language Development
Agile Design Sprints
Develop & Iterate
Designers, developers and data scientists met regularly for sprint ceremonies, and dedicated collaboration sessions to ensure design intent was fully realized. Any backlogged user feedback was prioritized and addressed while simultaneously executing visual QA tasks.
Activities:
Visual QA
Backlog refinement
Iterative development of User Feedback
Deploy & Test
In partnership with the internal Sport Clips tech team, we launched the experience while continuously measuring and iterating upon the design and functionality.
The revamped app allows users to see wait times at nearby stores, select a store and Stylist, and join the lineup from anywhere. No more wasting time in the lobby. Users can stay connected to the brand while they wait, then go on with your day friction-free.
Activities:
User Acceptance Testing
Customer Data Analytics
KPI Measurements
Survey Feedback
Design Team Training and Org Activation
Gearing Up for Game Time
Before laying down a single pixel, the team immersed themselves in the Sport Clips customer experience. We conducted ride-alongs to better understand booking, wait time, and store ingress/egress patterns. We followed the ride along with adjacent immersions in the store locations, and wrapped up by conducting in-depth interviews with customers, stylists, and salon leadership experts.
Crafting an All-Star Experience
Armed with insights from the field, the team outlined our behavioral archetypes and critical moments within the journey, where we could most strategically add value for our users.
A Technology Power Play
We seamlessly integrated Sport Clips’ booking engine, SalonUltimate, with an all-new front-end layer, empowering the company to improve the customer experience without making extensive operational changes or retraining employees.
BROAD PLATFORM SUPPORT
We developed a responsive store finder and booking experience across Android, iOS, and various web viewports.
CONNECTED CRM STRATEGY
Personalization improved as we replaced a legacy CRM system and developed branded emails for critical activities. We added push notifications that could be leveraged for reminders, geolocation-based check-in, and promotional alerts.
Post-launch, the team conducted on-going evaluative research by recruiting from our prioritized segmentation audiences. We facilitated over two dozen hours of testing on high-fidelity prototypes and coupled our insights with data from the live experience to iterate upon our product roadmap and refine the experience.
