See’s Candies | A Deliciously Sweet UX Display
By: Amelia Castellanos
Tags: Ui Ux Design, Conversion Optimization, Website Development, Website Design, Customer Experience

As an avid online shopper with an affinity for good UI and UX, I was intrigued earlier this week on an internal Google Meet when my business partner, Katie Hurley, mentioned in passing that I need to check out the See’s Candies website.

“You are going to nerd out”, she explained.

She knows me all too well and is very well-versed in my tech nerd ways so needless to say her comment piqued my curiosity.

You can imagine my initial thoughts, See’s Candies I asked myself? As in the candy chain I’ve always seen in shopping malls in and around Los Angeles but never actually tried? I need to check out their website? My mind raced.

Disclaimer to all the See’s enthusiasts out there. It’s not that I am not a fan, just never tried it because I grew up in the South and we did not have See’s in East Tennessee.

Curiosity heightened, I made a note for myself to indeed check out See’s Candies online that following weekend. In fact, in my notebook, I wrote: “Buy stocking stuffers @ See’s — review checkout process”.

Then, over the weekend I sat down with my Nespresso, grabbed my iPad, and typed in www.sees.com and before I knew it I found myself adding to cart for almost everyone on my list, all the while taking notes, recording screen videos, and basking in the joyous feeling of how remarkable their UI and UX was.

Not only is the shopping experience seamless and frankly, downright enjoyable — gifts for every price point, gift sets, customer favorites — but the real fun starts when you hit the checkout now button.

Now before I start down a rabbit hole of just how incredible See’s checkout flow truly is, it is important to note that the problem they have solved, and beautifully executed in my opinion, is a problem I have faced year after year with brands looking to enhance their website experience around the Holidays and that is the dreaded dilemma of shipping to multiple destinations.

Without fail, every year I have a client who wants to take things up a notch when it comes to how customers shop for gifts from their online store.

Optional gift wrap at checkout? Easy, there’s an app for that. Digital Gift Cards? Done. Gift Receipt, a little tricky but still doable. Shipping to multiple locations from a single checkout — now we’re talking.

But despite the brand’s excitement, and countless hours spent on project wireframes, year after year this project gets placed on the back burner for one reason or another. Programming costs are simply too high. The development calendar just doesn’t work out. Or more often than not, the UI design just isn’t there so it’s pushed to the following year’s agenda.

So yes, I may be a little biased here but to finally see this much sought-after functionality in action made my day. And as a result, there are a number of boxes of chocolates traveling across the US at this very moment, each with an individual gift message and destination from yours truly.

Here are the highlights of the See’s Candies experience:

The site allows for up to fifty, yes I said it, individual shipments in a single order.

Adding a new shipping address is as easy as clicking the “ADD ANOTHER SHIPPING ADDRESS” button after entering in your initial shipping details.

For each shipment, you can easily select from a range of gift message templates, add in your own custom gift message or, opt not to include a gift message at all.

You can even use the same gift message across all of your shipments with a single click.

Shipping options are available for each individual shipping address. And for those who have it together and start their Christmas shopping early (unlike myself), there is even a SELECT FROM CALENDAR option which allows you to choose a later date to ship your gift.

Hit the checkout button after accidentally skipping a gift message? The system prompts you to confirm if you want to add a message or proceed to checkout without it.

Once you enter step two of the exceptionally well-designed checkout flow a detailed order summary appears on the right-hand side of your screen and follows you through the rest of the checkout process. Displaying all of your shipments, their details, and their estimated delivery dates.

Overall this was admittedly one of the most enjoyable online shopping experiences I can recall. And though simplistic in nature, with so much going on behind the scenes the customer experience was both simple and satisfying. My only con? And yes, there always has to be a con — is that your shopping cart has to be the same for all recipients — making this the perfect gift destination for all of us procrastinators out there but for those proactive shoppers who have the luxury of time and can source different gifts for everyone on their list — this feature may fall a little short.

And though it may be a little late in the Holiday game to go to your development team and ask them for multiple location functionality at checkout there are a number of takeaways here that marketers or brand/company owners can build off of to create a conversion rate optimization plan for your online store specific to your target customer and their ultimate user experience.

Looking start to finish there are hundreds of touchpoints within the See’s Candies experience that you can dissect and build on for your own business model but let’s focus on the low-hanging fruit because I’m all about action items that can actually be implemented quickly and efficiently.

Convenience

The ability to send the same gift package to multiple recipients within a single order results in significant time savings and for all of us, time is money. Poll a hundred people what they wish they had more of and I would wager that a vast majority of them would ask for time. The ability to quickly and easily check something off of your to-do list in a single session, such as secure all of your client holiday packages, is priceless, and See’s has really tapped into that this holiday season.

Ease Of Use

Personalization, arguably the hottest marketing trend of 2020, can be found at the core of See’s Candies. Leveraging the power of personalization through an assortment of curated shopping experiences See’s eCommerce site reduces the number of choices, making it easier for the user to navigate product, connect with product and add to cart — placing them one step closer to conversion, all the while avoiding those hurdles that can disrupt the flow to checkout such as too much scrolling and too many clicks.

Reliability

A small site component with big impact, the shipping details summary that follows you throughout all steps of the checkout reinforces that shipping is both timely and dependable and for someone spending money on gifts for their loved ones, confidence in a brand’s deliverability and quality of service is critical to creating purchase power. And that purchasing power means a user is far less likely to abandon checkout or exit the site without converting.