New Design & Information Architecture for My First Piano

We recently redeveloped the online browsing system for My First Piano, a business in Mesa, Arizona that specializes in creating a unique, creative, and buyer-friendly approach the piano-purchase process. Sensing the frustration many first-time musical instrument customers feel when making such a major purchase, My First Piano offers an affordable monthly "play rate" that allows customers to, in their words, "date" their instrument before being required to "get married". 

In keeping with My First Piano's business model, in 2008 we designed and built an innovative website that allowed real-time online display of their inventory including imagery, videos, and an online reservation system. During Summer 2011, we completely overhauled the reservation system, displaying more information up-front and reducing the clicks necessary to view media and ultimately select the piano of one's choice, consequently increasing the speed and convenience for customers and ultimately increasing the pace of online reservations by approximately 50%.

In our original plan, we employed the traditional shopping-cart architecture by requiring customers to click from the inventory page to an individual instrument's profile before it was possible to select this piano and check out, requiring an additional page load in between. This was based partly on the assumption that a customer may choose to add multiple instruments to a shopping cart before choosing one and completing checkout. During the 2011 redevelopment, we decided to encourage customers to choose a piano for reservation directly from the initial inventory page itself. When this option is clicked, an overlay appears in which personal information can be entered, allowing immediate checkout. The diagram below displays the difference:

Steps required, previous architecture:

1. My First Piano homepage
2. Browse Pianos
3. Filter results if necessary
4. Click to view a piano "profile"
5. Select "Add to Cart"
6. Select "play period" and delivery dates
7. Enter purchase information and complete reservation

Steps required, improved architecture:

1. My First Piano homepage
2. Select piano type(s) to browse
3. Select a Piano
4. Select "play period", delivery dates, and enter purchase information and complete reservation

As you can see, we successfully reduced the total number of clicks, and requisite page loads, by up to 3. That's what we'd call a success!