Michelin -Retail shopping app
Team Michelin
Michelin's industry-leading experts find the single perfect tire for you.
Mobile responsive web app.
The Michelin Tire Selector
Consumers spend 30 hours or more looking for tires, and still end up buying sub-par products –its a truly painful experience.
Why don’t customers feel confident about buying Michelin tires every time?
Michelin has been around for 130 years and has made tires for the Space Shuttle, F1 race cars, and even Tour de France-winning bicycles; these experts know a thing or two about what makes for a good tire. They also realize that everyone has a unique driving style.
Most people think a tire is just a tire.
Michelin loses sales because consumers don’t feel confident in their choice of product or brand.
In most cases the consumer doesn’t even know where to begin in educating themselves.
Like most tire manufacturers Michelin's site suffered from a glut of product choices leaving users confused and unsure of what or why they should choose one product line or feature over another.
Searching for tires online typically takes consumers days to do, and often returns 10-15 products that basically all looked the same, had comparable performance, and had little differentiation to the untrained expert.
The secondary challenge Michelin faced is it didn’t own or manage any tire dealerships, so it was at the mercy of 3rd party sales agents who were typically incentivized to sell competitor brands.
How do we help customers find the right tire?
To help consumers deal with the glut of products, we started to think through how to build a logic-based search tool to give customers insights and reasoning behind every decision and the impacts of their choices on the final driving experience. The results would be the perfect tire for their unique driving needs.
A logic engine on its own won’t convert hearts and minds because everyone has a search tool on their site. We needed to go further and create an engaging experience that gave the customer a memorable experience, one that helped them understand their choices, communicated the benefits of their selections in a relatable way, and made them confident enough to defend their choice of product once they got to the dealership.
Know the driver. Know the road.
What if we could know the journey a driver takes everyday, their commute to work, picking up the kids, going to the grocery store and getting gas?
If we knew their daily routine we could look at the roads they drive on, getting data from the MTA, Google maps, NOA, and calculate not just the road conditions, but the annual weather forecasts, traffic patterns, and even where the worst potholes are. This data would help us laser focus in on the perfect tire.
One early concept we discussed with Michelin was leveraging the GPS unit in most modern vehicles, to track the speed, direction, and driving habits. We felt that this might be difficult to get adoption, although by partnering with insurance companies we might incentivize drivers to opt-in to get a reduction on their premiums. Failing that I thought about mobile technology and how modern smart phones can essentially do this already. What if updated the Michelin app and added smart map that a driver could draw their commute on, and from their we could calculate the best tires for their vehicle, the closest dealership, and even help target them with appropriate messaging based on weather and traffic patterns.
I quickly sketched out a prototype to enable feasibility discussions with Michelin’s product & technology teams.
The outcome of the discussions was that we needed some method to search the entire catalog based on specific parameters given by the consumer. A recommendation engine was needed – a radical notion at the time, as Michelin did not have mature data capabilities.
Early sketch of the Michelin experts as ‘Team Michelin.’
Consumers buy with their hearts
When Google can return a million search results in less than 2 seconds, how do we make the consumer feel like we’ve really considered their individualistic needs when recommending a tire, and that it isn’t just an algorithm?
We have to make sure the consumer feels like they’ve been heard, answered all their questions, and that the advice we give them is as unique as they are.
The logic engine took some time to build as we had to work through how it would comb through Michelin’s massive list of product skews to find the highest rated tire for the customers unique needs. We then had to sit with the Michelin experts and come up with a logic flow that would ask the right questions at the right time.
Deliver the perfect tire for any driving style.
Expert guidance from seasoned industry experts.
We took the best of the best; a tire designer, a product engineer and a test track race car driver and filmed them walking you through the search process, teaching you along the way how to make the best decisions for any vehicle, driving style, or road conditions.
We looked through all the data that Michelin had on how customers make purchasing decisions.
We took that data and synthesized it into educational content that aligned with customer needs, building out videos, tutorials, and dialog for our actors to frame the benefits of the products in ways that addressed the buying mindset. Some of the videos we made showed in great detail how the tires behaved in different driving conditions like driving in rain or ice (making the tires performance factors that are often overlooked), into a visceral experience.
Full Michelin.com redesign, with Tire Selector prominently displayed.
Early sketches to valid technical feasibility
Early sketches to valid technical feasibility
Early sketches to valid technical feasibility
Early sketches to valid technical feasibility
Early sketches to valid technical feasibility
Early sketches to valid technical feasibility
Early sketches to valid technical feasibility
Early sketches to valid technical feasibility
Early sketches to valid technical feasibility
Early sketches to valid technical feasibility
Early sketches to valid technical feasibility
Early sketches to valid technical feasibility
Select your vehicle.
Driving conditions.
Driving style.
Tire Selector results.
Locating a local dealer to have tires installed.
Helps set up an appointment to close the sales transaction.
Educating the consumer
Educating the consumer
Most tires look the same to consumers.
Part of the goal of the redesign was to educate the consumer on why Michelin is a superior product to competitors. We created a series of videos to unpack the technology inside Michelin tires so that consumers could ask informed questions at the point of purchase.
We created printable guides and directions to local dealerships to make the purchase process as seamless as possible.
Closing the loop to get the final sale
Once a consumer had been through the process, they were able to set up an appointment at a local dealer, and print out their results all from the Tire Selector - which helped Michelin complete and track the sale. We had to develop separate style sheets for a printable version of the content that included; the name of the dealership with business hours, a personalized map, and a detailed description of the product so there was no confusion at the point of purchase, (3rd party dealers often try to undercut Michelin with other products).
Results of the tire selector point to a single product with one alternate, (a business choice).
The website printed directions to trusted service centers, completing the purchase process.
3 months of deep technical discussions = logic engine schematic.
What the client said
“The best you can hope for is that your agency will deliver what you want, but what you really hope for is that they’ll give you what you need. Chris did just that with tireless energy and enthusiasm for the brand.
Chris contributed to our business success more than any one person. Chris delivered not best in class, but a world class solution in the RISE and Tire Selector projects.”
“Chris led the user experience work for our website redesign and creation of a category leading tire selection tool. The projects involved multiple internal stakeholders, multiple agencies, numerous brand standards, and complex technical and product requirements. He brought great ideas and vision to the table while balancing cost and timing considerations.
His calm leadership style, design expertise and good natured approach were welcome additions to the team and projects. Chris has been a pleasure to work with and get to know personally, and I would highly recommend him.”
— Jennifer (Graf) Smith, North American Business Model Leader at Michelin
“Chris was an integral part of a team that worked on redesigning our website. He is very creative and knowledgeable, as well as easy to work with. He has good ideas and understands the digital space. I would definitely recommend Chris to a potential employer or on new projects.”
— Jill (Weninger) Goulette - Director Customer Experience, B2B at Michelin
