Reimagining the Mattress Shopping Experience

A Seamless Path to Better Zzzs

Shopping for a mattress can be overwhelming, with countless options, materials and price points. We set out to simplify the decision-making process by creating a guided experience that helps customers find the perfect mattress based on their unique sleep needs.

Project type

Omni-channel Retail

Project Status

Under review

Impact

🚀 Increased customer confidence in choosing the right mattress


🏆 Strengthened competitive edge against DTC brands by offering a guided shopping experience

Timeline

1 month

Team

Associate Partner

UX Lead (Me)

Senior Designer

1 Business Consultant

The Challenge

Customers often struggle to determine which mattress is best for them, leading to decision fatigue, uncertainty, and a reliance on in-store guidance.

With increased competition from DTC brands like Casper and Nectar, we needed to deliver a solution that provided the same level of confidence in an omni-channel shopping experience.

Understanding Customer Needs

We conducted five in-depth 1:1 customer interviews to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges and decisions customers face when choosing a mattress.

Key Insights from Customer Interviews

  1. Overwhelming Choices Create Decision Fatigue

    • Customers struggled with too many options and relied on in-store associates for guidance, but wished for an easier way to narrow down choices beforehand.

  2. Comfort & Fit Are Highly Subjective

    • Online shoppers lacked confidence since mattress comfort is hard to gauge without trying in person.

  3. Customers Value Expert-Backed Recommendations

    • They appreciated the idea of a quiz-based tool that simplifies their decision by highlighting key differentiators between mattress options.

  4. Trust & Transparency Matter

    • Customers wanted clear, unbiased product comparisons rather than feeling like they were being upsold.

Validating Concepts

After identifying key pain points, we generated a series of potential solutions aimed at improving the mattress shopping experience. To ensure we focused on what mattered most to customers, we conducted a stack-ranking exercise, where participants ranked concepts based on their importance and perceived value.

This approach helped us:
✔ Identify the most impactful features by prioritizing what resonated most with customers.
✔ Refine lower-ranked ideas to better align with user needs.
✔ Ensure our final solution addressed real pain points, not just business assumptions.

Drawing Industry Inspiration

To create a seamless and intuitive mattress shopping experience, I analyzed industry leaders like Tempur-Pedic and Nectar, as well as user-friendly features from platforms like the SleepMe app.

  • Tempur-Pedic: analyzed their approach to guiding customers through firmness selection and sleep preferences.

  • Nectar: their DTC approach focuses on fewer, well-differentiated options, making it easier for customers to choose.

  • SleepMe App: Examined their data-driven, interactive UI, which helps users optimize sleep, to inform how we structured engaging, step-by-step product discovery.

By borrowing proven design patterns and adapting them to our unique customer needs, we created a guided, confidence-boosting shopping experience that helps users find their perfect mattress with ease.

Current Approach

The current quiz experience has several UX challenges that create friction in the customer journey. Here are some key areas for improvement:

1. Lack of Engagement & Personalization

  • There’s no dynamic feedback as users answer questions—no visual or text-based cues reassuring them that their inputs matter.

2. Overly Simplistic or Vague Questions

  • Some questions don’t dig deep enough into customer’s or their sleep partner’s preferences.

3. Lack of Visual Guidance

  • There’s no engaging UI elements like sliders, tappable cards, or icons to make the process feel intuitive.

4. Unclear or Unconvincing Results Page

  • The quiz results feel underwhelming, with no side-by-side comparison or ability to refine results.

5. No Omni-Channel Continuity

  • If a user completes the quiz online, there’s no easy way for sales associates to access their results in-store.

New Approach

Leveraging deep customer insights, we had the unique opportunity to design meaningful experiences that empower mattress buyers on their journey to better sleep.

We designed a personalized mattress-matching experience that asks key questions about sleep preferences, body and comfort levels.

  • Guides customers through the selection process by narrowing down choices and takes into account their sleep partner’s preferences.

  • Increases confidence in online and in-store purchases.

  • Aligns with sales associates' recommendations, creating a seamless experience across channels.

Key UX Solutions

  1. MattressMatcher Quiz

    • Provided data-backed recommendations based on sleep habits, firmness preferences, and pain relief needs.

    • Enabled customers the ability to adjust quiz results in-store based on their liking.

  2. Seamless Omni-Channel Integration

    • Ensured customers could start online and refine/finalize their purchase in-store.

    • Allowed in-store associates to access quiz results, improving consultation efficiency.

  3. Comparison & Education

    • Created educational content based on customers with similar sleep needs.

Make overall adjustments based on their quiz results

Preview screen which highlights the refined recommendations process

In-store quiz allows for more refinement based on real-world feel

Filter by customers with similar needs to you

Future Iterations

If further work was done on this project some of the areas I would focus on based on the research are:

  • Way-finding in the store in order to quickly identify the mattress you found online

  • Flagship store experience where people can mimic their at home sleeping preferences (i.e. lighting, eye masks, white noise, etc.)

  • Visualize mattress fit in their own space by leveraging Augmented Reality and reducing the risk of returns, ultimately leading to a more satisfying shopping journey.