Best Buy · 6+ Annual Sales Events

Sales EventTransformation

Rebuilding a static, fragmented deals page into a modular, personalized event ecosystem. Designed to scale across every major sales event in the calendar year.

0
Conversion
Lift
$4M–$7M annual impact
0
Mobile Engagement
$10M influenced revenue
0
Module Interaction
Priority SKUs & stories
RoleSenior UX Designer
PlatformWeb · Mobile · App
TeamUX · PM · Engineering · Research · Marketing · Stakeholders
ScaleHandles each sales event throughout the year
Context

A page built for marketing, not for people

Best Buy's sales events, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Memorial Day, and 4th of July, for example, are high-pressure weeks where millions of customers arrive with urgency, in a compact window of time. These moments drive a significant portion of annual revenue.

Unfortunately, the experience hadn't kept up. Deals were buried in long, unstructured grids. Teams rebuilt the same brittle pattern every year. There was no shared architecture, personalization integration, or a foundation that could flex across events.


Before - Desktop

Before — Desktop

Before - Mobile

Before — Mobile


Research

Grounding in real customer behavior

Research spanned from ContentSquare analytics, usability sessions, empathy mapping, and competitive benchmarking across Target, Amazon, Walmart, Etsy, and Sephora. Three distinct user archetypes emerged, each with different expectations for the same event page:

Seasonal Deal Hunter arrived through a paid search, with a price-first mentality, and is skeptical. Needs bold event branding and instant deal access.

Engaged Best Buy Customer returning shopper, logged in. Expects personalized deals relevant to past purchases.

Total Member high-value, app-engaged paid Best Buy member. Motivated by exclusivity, member-first pricing, and early access.

Key Insight

The same event page needed to serve three fundamentally different mental models without fragmenting into three separate experiences.


Urgency Browsing driven
Loyalty Relevance driven
Exclusivity Status driven

System Design

Three acts. One connected system.

The old experience was basically a catalog. The new one needed to be a system with modular containers reusable across every event without rebuilding. We evaluated 7 information architecture (IA) layout approaches and selected a hybrid: defined top-down flow (Inspire → Discover → Convert) with AML powering product selection within each section.

Every module maps to a specific moment in the customer's mindset:

Act 01
Inspire me
  • Event hero + branding
  • Sale narrative + trust signals
  • Category carousels
Act 02
Help me discover
  • Thematic deal stories
  • Budget-based filtering
  • "Deals for You" (AML)
Act 03
Get me the deal
  • Simplified SKU cards
  • Price clarity + urgency
  • Fast add-to-cart
Module System Overview

Module System Overview


Before → After

The same broken pattern, shipped every year

Before
  • No visual hierarchy where modules competed for attention
  • Heavy scroll fatigue because deals were buried
  • Rebuilt from scratch for every event
  • No personalization or AML integration
  • Event identity was lost once users filtered
After
  • Clear hierarchy with streamlined storytelling to guide attention
  • Deals surface faster with category-first navigation
  • Modular system scales across 6+ events
  • AML-powered personalization throughout
  • Persistent event identity across all states

Final - Desktop

Final — Desktop

Final - Mobile

Final — Mobile


Validation

Techtober 2025 usability research

Before scaling system-wide, we ran usability sessions during Techtober to measure comprehension, navigation, and engagement in real customer sessions.

What we validated

  • Shoppers recognized the event branding immediately and found products quickly.
  • Red price treatment built trust.
  • The category carousel made browsing intuitive.
  • Several participants noticed personalization unprompted.

What we refined

  • Persistent event identity across filters and PLPs.
  • Standardized deal signals (red + strike-through + event badge).
  • "Back to Sale" anchor.
  • Urgency cues moved above the fold.

Results

Measurable impact at massive scale

  • 18% conversion lift, translating to $4M–$7M in annual revenue impact.
  • +31 basis points mobile engagement lift, which was approximately $10M in influenced revenue.
  • 15% increase in module interactions for priority SKUs and featured deal stories.

The systemic impact is equally significant, with the modular architecture now scaling across 6+ annual events without the one-off rebuild cycle, design-to-launch time dropping substantially, and AML integration laying the foundation for increasingly personalized experiences in future events.

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