Reimagining the wedding registry

Why was a wedding registry platform with great products struggling to get couples to use it?

A wedding registry service hired our team to improve their website’s engagement and conversion rate. Couples were creating registries but not using them, and those who did rarely added many gifts to their registry. Through usability reviews, competitor analysis, and user interviews with real couples, we informed a site redesign that is projected to increase the average registry value by 44% in 2026.

Overview

Role: UX Researcher

Timeline: 5 months 

Tools used: Google Suite, Zoom, Figjam

Methods: Heuristic evaluation, competitive analysis, user interviews

Role: UX Researcher

Internal Team: 3 UX researchers, 2 designers

Client Stakeholders: Design director, product manager

Note: This project is under an NDA. I can’t disclose the name of the client that I worked with or show deliverables and screens that tie back to the client in any way. The images used here are purely for illustrative purposes.

Problem Statement

Many couples were creating a wedding registry with our client’s website but either abandoning it or adding very few items, resulting in significantly lower registry value compared to competitors and millions in lost revenue for the business.

Project Goals

Improve website engagement and conversion rate for the client’s wedding registry website by:

  • Learning about what motivates and detracts new and existing customers from using the client’s online wedding registry

  • Providing a fresh perspective on how customers perceive online wedding registries

  • Redesigning the registry website based on research findings

The Context

In North America, one of the many responsibilities that an engaged couple has is to create a wedding registry. A wedding registry is a service that allows couples to create a list of items they would like to receive as gifts for their wedding.

One of our past clients has their own online wedding registry service that’s offered to couples across Canada and the US. But they were facing two major challenges:

  • Couples weren’t adding that many items to their registries

  • Many registries stayed inactive after being created

They wanted to understand why they were experiencing this problem and how they could improve their site’s engagement and conversion rate.

Starting with usability

Our research team began by conducting a heuristic evaluation (ISO 9241-11) on the client’s website to understand where it currently stands in terms of usability and UX best practices. All major website flows were evaluated, including the process of creating a new registry, adding an item to a registry, and managing a registry.

Although the client’s website had lots of features and a large registry item selection, it also had some issues around discoverability and inefficient UI patterns. These issues may have caused customers to opt for other services that offered a different experience.

  • We used the ISO 9241-11 guidelines for the evaluation as they focus on usability experienced in a specific context. They were also better aligned to our goal of improving user engagement, as satisfaction was a key component to the evaluation.

    • It was hard to find the wedding registry feature, as it was quite hidden within the website’s navigation menu. Many potential customers could have missed this service altogether while browsing the site.

    • Many registry item actions required at least two clicks, making it frustrating and time consuming to work with multiple items.

    • There were four different UI variations for adding an item to a registry, which made some parts of the registry feel like a separate part of the website.

    • Less common features, such as thanking lists, group gifting, and gift recommendations were difficult to find and did not work as intended. This means that customers are unlikely to get any value from these features.

What about the competitors?

I worked with two UX designers on my team to capture information from six of the most popular competitor websites. I wanted to identify opportunities the client capitalize on by understanding common site structures, trends, issues, and stand-out features.

We found that every competitor brought a unique set of features to the market, such as an onboarding questionnaire, alternative gifting options, and personalization options. Our client needed to better highlight it’s own services and add new ones to be competitive, while also having a look and feel that was more than just an e-commerce website.

  • It was important for us to look at competitor sites because the client wanted to understand the overall wedding registry market landscape. Doing this analysis helped me understand what competitors were doing well, and what we should be avoiding for the redesign.

    • Each competitor had their own unique offering that made them standout. Some of these offerings were missing from our client’s website.

      • Examples of offerings included an engaging onboarding questionnaire, unconventional gifting options, registry personalization, advanced registry guidance, integration with other registries, and interesting discounts and perks.

    • Each competitor had a very distinct brand language and visual identity that differentiated itself from other websites. This is important, as our client’s website followed a more conventional e-commerce design.

    • Most registry websites follow a very similar structure in terms of navigation and flow. This means that our upcoming site redesign didn’t need to have a very different structure to be effective.

Talking to real couples

At this point, our team wanted to understand how couples use wedding registries. We decided to conduct 20 user interviews with recently married couples in the US to understand their experiences with wedding registries. The interviews focussed on three phases: deciding to use a registry, setting up a registry, and managing a registry.

Interviewing couples provided us with many useful insights around how couples use wedding registries and what’s important to them. We learned that couples want an elevated experience from their wedding registry. They want guidance, an interesting product selection, and a seamless experience for themselves and their guests.

  • One of our core research questions was around understanding engaged couple motivations and perceptions around wedding registries. Interviews were our go-to option because they could help us gather feedback without taking up too much time.

    • Three quarters of participants used at least two different wedding registry services, as each one offered different product selection and functionality. Trying out different registries was a key first step for many couples.

    • Couples mainly used the client’s registry website due to its familiarity and cheap product selection. But they went to other online registries for more exclusive and special gifts.

    • The use of a specific registry was often motivated by recommendations from friends and family, because many couples didn’t know which one to use and didn’t have an initial preference.

    • Couples cared a lot more about how their guests would use the registry, as they didn’t want their guests to have a poor shopping experience.

    • Couples needed different registry gifts depending on where they were in their lives. Those who already lived together before marriage needed less home basics.

    • Keeping track of item purchases from guests was an important aspect of managing a registry, as many participants wanted to express gratitude to their guests.

“We mainly used family and friends as a resource because we trusted their opinions and experience... It was important to us that our registry be accessible to people with a wide range of gifting preferences.”

“My fiance and I had been living together for a few years, so we had the pots and pans and all that good stuff. So I ended up just Googling things [that couples usually add to a registry].”

Answering the core research questions

Why were customers creating registries and then abandoning them?

Our interviews with couples revealed that trying out different registries was common before choosing one. 50 different wedding registries were mentioned in total, and participants were aware of 4 online registries on average. This could mean that couples tried out our client’s wedding registry service and decided to use a different one instead.

UI inconsistencies, limited branding, and a lack of some key features may have contributed to a higher abandonment rate.

Why were so few items being added to registries?

The majority of our participants used at least two registries, with some using as many as four. Some also mentioned that they registered for more basic household items when using the client’s registry service. Couples were registering for other types of gifts elsewhere.

One major opportunity for the client was to enhance their product selection, specifically prioritizing more elevated gifts and alternative gifting options. Creating a more expansive product selection would motivate couples to use the client’s registry service over others.

Informing the design direction

I decided to present a few different “conceptual directions” in the form of sitemaps to the client. Each direction highlighted different features and flows that would address the needs and pain points of couples. These directions were presented to the client to better understand what features and site structure were feasible for their team. This was also an opportunity to get a prioritized list of features that we should focus on for the redesign.

The Functional Approach

This approach focuses on addressing the usability issues that we found during the heuristic evaluation and making the experience as easy as possible.

  • Simplified navigation

  • Similar features combined

  • Easier navigation from the landing page

The Registry Advisor

This approach highlights some features that support the couples by providing more guidance throughout their experience.

  • Contextual FAQ sections

  • Improved help centre design

  • Blog page that went over registry best practices.

The Exceptional Guest Experience

This design approach addressed our findings around the guest experience being very important to couples.

  • Gift recommendations feature

  • “Thank you” list feature

  • Alternative view used by guests

Informing the new redesign

In the last phase of the project, I collaborated with our team’s UX designers to create the redesigned website for the client based on their feedback and feature priorities. We ended up taking elements from each sitemap approach and incorporating them into the final deliverable.

Functional Approach:

  • Simpler navigation

  • Easier access to registry features

Registry Advisor Approach:

  • Improved help section

  • Added “contextual” FAQ sections

Guest Experience:

  • Added a guest registry view

From findings to impact

It’s difficult to find the wedding registry feature on the client’s website from the navigation menu.

Improved registry discoverability by making wedding registry more prominent in the navigation menu.

Some registry offerings and features are nested in secondary pages, making them difficult to find.

Improved feature discovery by advertising registry offerings more clearly on the landing page.

Some competitors provide contextual support to customers throughout their site experience.

Added user guidance through contextual FAQ sections to help couples make better purchase decisions.

Some competitors provide an engaging onboarding questionnaire for better product recommendations.

Added a more personalized product selection by creating an optional registry questionnaire.

Most study participants expressed prioritizing the guest registry experience above their own.

Improved guest experience by adding group gifting, guest recommendations, and thank you list features.

An improved wedding registry experience backed by research

This work directly informed the design choices for the upcoming redesign and helped the client prioritize features for the website. The final designs were handed off to the client’s development team for implementation.

While the new experience has not launched publicly yet, we predict an increase to the average registry value by 44%. This is based on a comparison to the average registry value for other competitors. If the new experience can at least match the industry registry average, then the client can expect millions of dollars in revenue.

Reflections

This was a really interesting project with a unique problem space. A big reason it went well was the close collaboration between the researchers and designers on the team. Our research helped shape the design directions, and the designers contributed early on by capturing competitor design patterns and brand identities.

If we had more time and budget, I would have used a diary study as an alternative research method. Following couples through their full registry journey could have given us deeper insights into their overall experience.