Breathru Now
Designing Breakthru Beverage Group’s premiere B2B order management experience for on-premise and off-premise customers within the alcoholic beverages industry.
01 Overview
Breakthru Beverage Group is a leading North American beverage wholesaler who was relying on external partners to sell their portfolio of products across all 13 U.S. Markets in which they operate.
Looking to fully own their customer experience, data, and revenue streams, Breakthu Beverage Group worked with my team to launch a minimal viable product (MVP) for a new ordering and management product, followed by agile enhancements and a national rollout.
The Team
I served as Design Director for this project — managing a team of experience designers and strategists, while also partnering closely with executive stakeholders, business owners, and my broader delivery team for nearly two years.
Approach
Research & Analysis
We leveraged existing customer data and our own expanded research to identify customer needs and key functionality.
Solution & Design
In collaboration with business owners, we defined and designed the end-to-end product experience.
Launch & Iterate
We implemented data tracking and feedback tools to test the MVP experience and inform iterative enhancements as we rolled Breakthru Now out across all 13 U.S. Markets.
02 Research & Analysis
My team and I conducted primary research, various assessments, market analyses, and experiential benchmarking to inform our solutions.
We also synthesized available data from a recent customer survey, Google Analytics, Salsify product data, and partner studies. From our research we derived several user personas and journeys maps, then defined required features and strategic applications for MVP.
Guiding Principles
Established design principles, derived from research.
Usability
Minimize friction at all points of the customer journey with clear hierarchy, intuitive navigation, relatable filtering and swift, simple checkout.
Mobile-First
Start with mobile experiences and execute with responsive design to ensure experience across all devices are consistent, effective, and optimal.
Partnership
Establish Breakthru Now as a tool for monetized partnerships with suppliers, and as an extension to the existing Sales Rep Toolkit.
Sustainability
Design architecture and component libraries to be easily leveraged and customized for shifting needs and future expansions.
03 Solution & Design
Once we aligned on the core functionality needed for a successful MVP roll out, we moved into an agile framework to design and develop the product.
I oversaw and supported the creation of Breakthru Now’s information architecture (IA), user flows, mobile-first prototypes, and an atomic design system.
Product Discovery
Our research showed that customers were historically placing the same order over and over again — never branching out in Brands or products.
This not only impacted diversified revenue for Breakthru Beverage Group but also limited customers’ ability to sell competitively based on current market trends.
To solve for this, we created multiple points for merchandising across the global navigation, authenticated homepage, product pages, quick order, cart, and saved order lists.
04 Launch & Iterate
Following the MVP release of Breakthru Now, our team was expanded and I oversaw four agile workstreams:
I. Phase Two+
Sprint planning, backlog execution, and design for iterative enhancements.
II. Market Rollouts
Nuanced features and adoption strategy for product rollout across all 13 U.S. markets.
III. Insights & Testing
Data reporting; ongoing A/B and usability testing.
IV. Product Strategy
Executive planning and product roadmapping.
Deal Selection 0.0
A distinguishing feature of Breathru Now is the ability to apply exclusive savings via predefined, quantity-based deals.
Being a nuanced offering with complex business rules, this capability was descoped for the MVP release but prioritized and expanded upon as a post-MPV priority.
Deal Selection 1.0
A major phase 2 accomplishment was the release of a true deal selection experience.
However, feedback captured post-release quickly revealed that users did not understand they needed to still add to their cart after applying deals and returning to the product page.
Taking this as an opportunity to explore and test, my team and I dedicated an entire design sprint to nailing this feature:
Synthesizing user feedback
Benchmarking and ideation
Expanding business rules
User testing design concepts
Deal Selection 2.0
We synthesized user feedback and conducted additional secondary research to prototype two viable design concepts. We then ran our concepts through task-based, unmoderated usability testing to validate initial assumptions and uncover new opportunities for improvement.
Our efforts resulted in optimization that improved wayfinding, understanding, hierarchy, and enabled customers to add to cart directly from the deal selection drawer — addressing the primary issue.
This feature’s second release saw an immediate increase in conversion, task completion, and user satisfaction.
05 Product Strategy
In addition to leading the design work for Breakthru now, I also partnered closely with the business to define a long-term strategy for the product.
Our work was informed by established success metrics, customer data, market research, and analytics acquired since the first MVP rollout.
Ideation
To kickoff our strategy efforts, I leveraged defined KPIs and synthesized research to lead a collaborative, half-day Design Thinking Workshop for executive stakeholders, business owners, and product team leads.
Refinement
We consolidated workshop outputs with our existing backlog, applied analysis, scored them based on established metrics, and summarized it into a set of key recommendations across five key epics:
Data Analysis
Digital Merchandising
Content & Marketing
Market Rollout(s)
New Features
Strategy
The final output was a robust product roadmap that mapped prioritized tactics, expected outcomes, technology needs, and staffing requirements across each epic.
Digital Merchandising
As we began to move on our newly established product roadmap, we refined our approach to digital merchandising across Breakthru Now based on data we had been acquiring since MVP launch.
Business Outcome
Increase discovery of products, purchasing, and AOV via personalized, targeted merchandising tactics.
What We Saw
Featured products on homepage were receiving low clicks but resulted in high conversion when engaged with. Merchandising on product detail pages (PDPs) was highly effective, specifically related products.
Recommendations
A/B test upsell opportunities and contextual merchandising across deeper touchpoints of the customer journey.
Testing Program
To ensure long-term success for Breakthru Now, I also helped Breakthru Beverage Group define a sustainable program for usability testing and A/B testing as a means for validation.
The plan outlined the proven benefits of testing, best practice processes, recommended tools, and roles / responsibilities needed for establishing a successful program.
