IBM led the overhaul of Sobeys’ website. As designers, our goal was to create a digital shopping list that allowed customers to compile items from their local store for in-store use. This served as an interim solution until Sobeys could implement a native e-commerce checkout function on their website.
My contributions to design enabled Sobeys to track online-to-in-store sales, providing measurable insights into customer behaviour and purchase fulfillment. It also contributed to a broader orchestration and Sobeys unification initiative with a projected growth of 23% in revenue over the next year.
Currently, shoppers cannot directly checkout on Sobeys.com
Sobeys was revamping their website to catch-up with competitors. Their plan was to showcase products from within their local stores online. Currently, customers are redirected to Voilà, an online grocery delivery and pick-up platform, to view and buy products. However, a small percent of Sobeys' marketshare is from Voilà sales.
Customers were not incentivized to use Voilà because inventory and pricing were not representative of what was available in-stores. Sobeys must wait for their contract to end with Ocado, the vendor that powers Voilà, before implementing their own native checkout.
This called for an interim solution. Without a checkout, Sobeys was unable to measure sales to gauge the performance of their new online product catalog.
The Challenge:
How might we design an interim checkout flow that can infer online to in-store sales conversion?
Working within constraints
Developing the interim solution required collaborative brainstorming. Since Sobeys’ scope was to leverage existing capabilities rather than build a new system from scratch, we identified an opportunity to rework the existing shopping list feature.
With the launch of the new online product catalog, we asked: why not use this feature to let shoppers compile a shopping list to use in-store?
The challenge now was understanding what would incentivize shoppers to adopt Sobeys' lists
Through 20 user interviews, I explored how shoppers create grocery lists and uncovered opportunities to make Sobeys’ feature stand out.
A more reliable memory aid
Participants sometimes forgot to add items to their lists and only remembered to buy them when they came across them in-store.
Accurate in-store prices and tracking deals
Participants liked seeing online prices for products because they could calculate total grocery costs without cross-referencing flyers. They also wanted to keep a pulse on limited time deals.
Portability for on-the-go shopping
Some participants relied on their smartphone to track purchases, while others brought paper lists to check-off items as they shopped.
Gamification using Scene+ rewards (out-of-scope)
Incentives for actively tracking points and potential for shoppers to receive exclusive awards for using the checklist. This was an area that would make sense to revisit later on when a native check-out gets implemented.
Integrating the checklist into our design
As a group, we each came up with several ideas before reconvening to discuss a solution. After several rounds of brainstorming, we determined that the user journey was comprised of two distinct phases: 1) building the grocery list, and 2) tracking its completion during in-store shopping.
We landed on a toggle feature to switch between the two phases. However, I realized there were still some kinks to smooth out in how users transitioned between these modes.
Pros
The list can later be scaled into its own feature when checkout is introduced.
Users can build multiple lists at a time
Users can toggle between interactive checklist and builder view
Cons → serious dealbreakers
Lack of a clear end state reduced motivation to finish tasks
List abandonment could lead to incomplete data and therefore inaccurate telemetry
Taking a step back and into the shoes of Sobeys customers
I realized the experience overloaded users with multiple actions on one screen, which diluted their focus and intent. I restructured the design into two clear pathways—delivery via Voilà or in-store pickup—to reduce cognitive load and guide decision-making. To close the loop, I added an end state that records completion data, providing measurable outcomes for KPI tracking and analytics.
To bring the concept to life, I mapped out the user flow and designed wireframes that demonstrated how the proposed experience would guide customers through each step.
Digital shopping list interactions: designing input data for analytics
Based on the above flow, I proposed an experience that allows digital shopping list interactions (items added, viewed, or checked off) to be cross-referenced with Scene+ member purchase data, inferring which products a customer likely purchased in-store.
The only downside was that this capability was limited for non-Scene+ members, customers who are not part of Sobeys' loyalty program members. However, this solution offered the strongest opportunity to capture actionable data.
This required integration between:
Front-end interactions (shopping list event data)
Scene+ backend or point of sale system (actual transactions)
A backend matching algorithm to correlate digital behaviour with in-store purchase
This would be made possible through:
Secure access to Scene+ member transaction data via API
A shared product ID schema linking catalog and POS SKUs
Privacy-compliant tokenization for user identification
Wireframes: bringing both logic & delight to the experience
After aligning on business logic, I wanted to infuse the experience with excitement—transforming a simple shopping checklist into a playful journey where checking off items felt satisfying and goal-driven.
Final tweaks to design
This section highlights the revisions I made to meet both business and user needs. A major focus was reducing errors tied to store-specific pricing, while also providing clear recovery paths when users made mistakes. This consequently would also improve the quality of telemetry data that gets captured to infer list-based sales.
Before
The use of the toggle to switch between phases of adding items and checking them off led to passive engagement.
After
CTAs function as a decision point that create a moment of commitment, between saving money by shopping in-person or choosing delivery with Voilà.
Before
Pricing varies across store locations—not only between in-store and online. Even though users select their store earlier, the existing disclaimer is understated and risks being overlooked.
After
Displaying a map of the selected location provides clear confirmation while subtly transitioning users into an in-store shopping mindset.
Before
I noticed that items couldn’t be removed, potentially leading users to check them off just to clear the list—producing inaccurate data.
After
A clear “remove” action distinguishes between when users mark a product as purchased or abandoned. Additionally, we added an "undo" option to recover accidentally marked items.
A seemingly simple solution built on complex thinking
I created a shopping list companion that bridged digital browsing and physical shopping, helping Sobeys infer in-store purchases from customer interactions with the newly launched online catalog. Prior to this solution, Sobeys had no way to measure how their new website and online catalog was performing
Developing new KPIs for digital success
My designs enabled Sobeys to evaluate the success of digital transformations to their website—critical until e-commerce capabilities are implemented to track checkout sales data.
The list feature itself contributed to a broader digital transformation initiative with a projected 23% growth in revenue over the next year.
Once a checkout function is implemented, the use of lists will need to evolve to become its own feature. One potential direction is enabling a persistent, global watchlist for essential items, which would offer ongoing value beyond the single-use list model we designed.
During ideation, we explored displaying inventory quantity and aisle locations to help users find products faster. However, the feature was ultimately ruled out due to the lack of available data.
