NETGEAR Concierge
Designing an online concierge to bring a premium, human touch to NETGEAR.com, using live data to see what actually worked.
Role
Lead Designer
Timeline
4 Weeks
Team
CMO, Design, Web Dev
Tools
Figma, Balsamiq
Overview
A Premium Shopping Experience
To give digital customers a more premium way to shop, the design team set out to build an online concierge system for NETGEAR.com. As lead designer, I owned the experience end-to-end and collaborated with stakeholders up to the CMO. Since launch, NETGEAR Concierge has lifted average order value by 27.1%.
Process
Mapping the Journey
I began by mapping the customer journey in a user flow. Because the concierge would only appear on flagship product and landing pages, the flow stayed fairly self-contained. It surfaced a wide range of possible features early — and from the start, I advocated for fewer of them, wary that too many would dilute the system's core purpose.
Process
Wireframing the Interface
With many features to account for, the challenge was presenting them cleanly. Mobile was the tightest constraint, where a stacked approach worked best; on desktop I had room to test two different layouts. The wireframes gave the team a concrete basis to react to and set up the prototyping phase.
Prototyping
Designing to the Brief
I built several high-fidelity prototypes that added real functionality to the concept — a collapsed state, a chat interface, and an exit option — in a minimal style aligned with NETGEAR's design language. The brief called for a lot of copy, which I worried complicated the experience. I designed to the criteria anyway, knowing we'd validate it with real users on the live site.
Hover over image to play
Validation
What the Data Revealed
We shared the prototypes for feedback, then I built a version to test directly on the live site, since there was no budget for a formal testing platform at the time.
The results were clarifying. Customers who used the concierge did have a higher average order value — but few visitors clicked into it, many who did exited through the quick links, and users were confused between the "chat with an expert" and "chat with an agent" buttons. The signal was clear: the value was real, but the interface was getting in its own way.
Pivot
Cutting Back to the Core
The data confirmed what I'd suspected from the start, so I completely revamped the flow around the one thing that drove value: chatting with a sales representative. The team agreed to drastically simplify — cutting the quick links and replacing them with a single redirect to support, preserving the common path to customer service while removing the clutter that was pulling users away.
Shipped
The Final Build
Our web team built and deployed the streamlined component, focused squarely on its core purpose. I also changed the collapsed state's color to invite more interaction — directly addressing the low click-through from testing. A small change, informed by real data, aimed at the exact problem the research uncovered.
Outcome
Less Interface, More Impact
Simplifying the concierge around its core purpose paid off. Since launch, the data has been clear — and the project became a small case study in letting evidence, not opinion, decide what ships.
27.1%
Lift in average order value (2H 2021)
19%
Higher service attach rate
41.8%
Contributed to site-wide AOV increase
Shipped Experience
Explore the Final Prototype
An interactive walkthrough of the shipped concierge experience.
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