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Blizzard
World of Warcraft E-commerce Strategy

Summary

During my time at Blizzard, I worked in close collaboration with the World of Warcraft team in a series of projects to improve their in and out of game commerce experience. 

We mostly focused on improving:

  • The first time user experience 
  • All players in and out of game commerce experience

Goals

Streamline the flow to purchase World of Warcraft, its expansions and subscriptions.

Contribution

In collaboration with my direct manager, I was instrumental in:

  • Conducting the UX discovery phase (data analysis, competitive analysis, stakeholder interviews)
  • Analyzing the data and provided design recommendations.
  • Creating user flows, wireframes and prototype.
  • Participating to the Usability Study process.
  • Creating the optimization plan for the World of Warcraft browsing experience.

Discovery

During the discovery phase, we conducted the following:

  • Gathered and analyzed business intelligence and Google Analytics data.
  • Conducted a competitive analysis of MMO games business models and player experience.
  • Interviewed Stakeholders such as engineering teams, World of Warcraft team, Customer Support, Risk, etc.
  • Review current and past user studies data.

General Discovery Findings 

  • Most players did not understand WoW’s product offering.
  • Because of the different relationships between products, the eligibility table was difficult to manage from an engineering standpoint.
  • Players would have to go through two, sometime three, different platforms to buy the game and subscribe.
  • Players want to know that a subscription is required to play upfront.
  • Drop of 18% in conversion rate between a box purchase and subscription purchase.

Discovery Findings for new players

  • New players were confused between the game, the expansions and the subscription and didn’t understand what to buy in order to play the game.
  • The World of Warcraft Player community seem intimidating, since the game has been around for 10+ years.
  • New players felt like they missed the boat to start playing.
  • They weren’t aware that a free trial was available for new players.

Design

The UX team provided the following recommendations to improve player’s experience.

  • Provide a personalized browsing experience based on what players already own.
  • Make subscription a first class citizen of the purchasing experience.
  • Create a streamlined flow to purchase World of Warcraft and a subscription within the same session.
Initial wireframes
Low Fidelity Mocks
High Fidelity Concepts

Results

Despite the positive findings from the usability studies, the product team decided to limit the scope and implement a fraction of the recommended designs. There were hard engineering constraints and risks with revamping the whole product offering and the relationship between the products.

Even though we didn’t implemented the recommended option, the changes had a significant impact on the experience for players.

  • Drop-off rate between the game success page to the subscription purchase page went from 72% to 16%.
  • Subscription conversion rate doubled.