Project Overview

The Buy It Again feature had long been identified as valuable by multiple teams but was prioritized on our roadmap. Fortunately, we had supporting data from brand stakeholders, researchers, and our analytics team. The web team had even run an A/B test for one brand, which showed promising results and helped push the feature onto the app team's priority list. As the name suggests, the goal was to encourage repeat purchases of previously bought items—a pattern we’d already observed among returning users. While common in grocery and marketplace apps like Amazon, implementing this in apparel presents unique challenges due to variables like size, color, and style. Our multi-brand, multi-department nature added complexity, requiring the experience to adapt to diverse customer and product types.

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Key Insight

19% of all Gap Inc. U.S. customers repurchased the same item at least once within two years of their original purchase.

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Design Considerations

This feature presented several strategic and UX challenges, requiring decisions regarding user control, logic, placement, and scalability:

1. User Interaction – Simplicity vs. Control

• Should the experience be fast and frictionless (one-click reorder, like grocery apps)? Risk: if out of stock of the exact product, what happens?

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• Or should users have more control, allowing them to select a new size, color, or variant? Risk: makes the experience feel not as lightweight.

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Product Tile Design Explores

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2. Display Logic

• Recency vs. Frequency: Should items be ordered by most recent purchase or most frequent repurchase?

• Brand Control: Should brands have the ability to influence which items are prioritized?

• Relevance Filtering: Should items with low customer ratings be excluded?

• Prioritization: Should low-cost, frequently repurchased items be prioritized?

• Seasonality: Should seasonal considerations apply (e.g., pushing down out-of-season items)?

• Out-of-Stock Handling: If a specific size/color is unavailable but other variations exist, should the item still be displayed?

• Multi-Department Purchases: Should items from different departments (women's, men's, kids') be mixed or separated?

3. Cross-Brand Support vs. Single Brand View

• Should users only see purchases from the brand they’re currently shopping (e.g., Old Navy app only shows Old Navy purchases)?
• Or should we support cross-brand visibility within Gap Inc. for a broader repurchase experience?

4. Placement – Where Does It Live?

Balancing visibility vs. intrusiveness was key. Potential placements included:

• Homepage
• Search results
• Product pages
• Category pages