U.S. Tariffs

Timeline

August - November 2024

Role

Lead UX/UI Designer

Overview

Solution to inform customers of the new Section 301 tariffs during the end to end shopping experience.

Problem statement

With the ever-changing and dynamic domains of global trade and the industry, it is imperative that Mouser provide a solution that can handle surcharges for both web and conventional sales, dynamically displaying and calculating cost elements and covering global tariffs and duties.

How can we be transparent about the tariffs customers will have to pay?

Our solution

A multi-step process to meet our needs.

Me and the Site Commerce team spent multiple months ahead of development working on the discovery phase of this project. We gathered information and requirements, looked at competitor solutions, spoke to internal stakeholders, and finally, designed a prototype before we finally landed on a solution that met our complex list of user and business needs.

Messaging throughout the website

Anywhere we show pricing on our website, we will show a message letting the customer know what particular parts might be subject to a tariff. We cannot 100% confirm if the part is subject to a tariff until the customer gives us their shipping address and we confirm whether or not it is in the United States. By giving the customer this messaging before they reach the cart we are:

Helping customers identify tariffed parts.
Informing customers of price increases before they get to the end of their shopping journey.

Pricing breakdown in cart and checkout

Once customers arrive at the cart, they will see a separate line telling them how much the tariff is on each product where a tariff applies. Once in checkout the order summary will have a separate line that includes the total tariff price. By doing this we are:

Allowing customers to see exactly which parts are subject to tariffs
Being transparent with customers about our tariff pricing

How did we get there?

Analyzing business and user needs

One of the first steps we took as a UX group was to identify where we display pricing and decide, based on requirements from the business, if we need to display either messaging about the new tariffs or display a separate tariff cost. We decided that at the very least we would need to inform customers in the search refine and product detail pages, where the customer behavior is browsing, making decisions, etc. This way customers would know up front that the product they are considering purchasing has a tariff associated with it. The other place we knew for sure we would have to be cart and checkout. This is where customers are checking order totals and committing to the purchase.

At this point in our discovery we still had questions about if we would include the tariff cost into the price of the product, keep it separate, or only display messaging and the final invoice would have full tariff costs.

Conversations with stakeholders

During the discovery process I had the opportunity to get a few meetings with the VP of Pricing and the Director of Global Sales Ops. Speaking to these two individuals gave me a lot of insight into what leadership was really wanting to see for this project and the direction they wanted it to go. Through our conversations I was able to show preliminary mockups and get feedback, get an understanding that tariffs included in the price of the product was off the table, and understand that the business didn't want customers to feel like we were being sneaky with our pricing.

Understanding these points from leadership really helped me advocate for showing the message or tariff cost in every place we display pricing. This would include any quotes, or other purchasing tools we have on our site as well as search refine, PDP, and cart/checkout.

Collaborating with the development team

After I got feedback and direction from leadership, I created mockups that matched the vision and got ready to work with our development team to understand if what was wanted was possible. Luckily, what we wanted to do for the initial launch was very doable for the development team and we had no issues adding messaging around the website or tariff pricing in cart and checkout.

Once the project got into development and individual teams got their work I also helped manage questions about alignment, messaging, different use cases, etc.

Outcomes

Customer Feedback

When we launched the U.S. Tariffs project, we also set up a dashboard in Qualtrics that would allow us to see all tariff-related feedback. This feedback was collected from multiple sources including surveys on the Mouser website, surveys sent out with order confirmation emails. and our Trust Pilot reviews.

Feedback was split - some users liked the tariff being shown & separate on their order total. Others did not like the tariff being separate and said it complicated their accounting processes.

"Why are you charging "tariff" fees on items you already have in stock and there has not been a tariff levied at this time?"

- United States

"One thing I was disappointed about was that the tariff cost isn't included in the cost of the part. I would have been happy to pay slightly more for the parts and never know that a tariff cost was included in it, but seeing that cost broken out as a separate additional line item annoyed me. Better service includes ALL costs in the original listing price, including tariffs."

- United States