Flipkart redesigns its app interface with a focus on groceries

Walmart-owned Flipkart has redesigned its app interface in an effort to make user experience more intuitive and simple to navigate. As the ecommerce company expands the availability of its grocery delivery features to over 1,800 cities, it has placed a “Grocery” tab at the top left of the app when users open it.
Apart from the addition of the Grocery tab, Flipkart has also removed all the buttons on the top bar, including the “hamburger menu” (three vertical bars), notification button and cart button. These buttons have been shifted to the bottom of the screen where they will remain more accessible for users to hit with their thumb.
“Flipkart is very excited about grocery. Grocery is a very powerful category. Your purchase frequency is higher. The number of times you visit and purchase is very different. This is something that we are thrilled and excited about,” said Bharat Ram, Vice-President, User Activation and Retention at Flipkart, during an online press conference.

The search bar retains its position right below the top bar. Under the search bar, there is a new “discovery menu” which has icons for top offers, SuperCoins, Stores, Flipkart Feeds, and other features. The bottom bar now has the icons for “Home”, notifications and the user’s cart.
“With millions of first-time internet users exploring e-commerce from not just from metros but from tier 2 and tier 3 cities, it was imperative to create a user experience that caters to the diverse needs of the users,” said a press statement from the ecommerce company. The redesign is aimed at making the experience of navigating between different categories of products and services more intuitive for these new customers.
According to Ram, the new design was deployed after it was proven to be successful during the company’s A/B testing where they learn that the usage of the bottom bar increased almost five times due to the new functionality embedded in it. Ram also told that the new Grocery tab will only be visible for users living in geographies where the service is currently available.