Industry
Automotive software
Status
Shipped, 2024
Project type
Website
Tools
Service writers often build quotes long before they're ready to purchase parts. That gap can last hours, days or weeks, while shops wait on customer approval.
I led the end-to-end design of Saved Carts, allowing shops to pause, find, and resume purchasing without rebuilding their work.
Mimi Banerjee
Product Designer
JL
Juan Larrea
SR. Product Manager
OK
Oleg Koleshchuk
Lead Engineer
MK
Mariia Kanivets
Software Engineer
Problem
Without an integrated shop management system (SMS), standalone shops recreated carts from scratch or tracked their work outside of PartsTech while waiting for customer approval.
Solution
An auto-saving cart experience with a dedicated workspace for managing and resuming purchases.
Results
87.2% end-to-end conversion from viewing a saved cart to completing a purchase.
92.9% of users who viewed a saved cart re-added parts to their cart.
Before: carts lost between sessions
Without a way to preserve a cart in between quote creation and part purchasing, shop had two options.
Rebuild the cart: Search for the same parts again after approval.
Track it elsewhere: Keep quotes in spreadsheets, notes, or another system.
Prioritizing the right users for MVP
Customer conversations revealed that quoting workflows varied across shop segments.
Multiple customer segments wanted Saved Carts, but their needs and technical dependencies differed.
Working with my PM and engineering, I evaluated four segments against customer value and implementation complexity.
The decision: Prioritize standalone repair shops for the MVP, where we could deliver the greatest immediate value.
Standalone tire users
Manage and revisit created and accepted good, better, best tire quotes.
Fast follow up
Punch out users
Little to no added value. Their shop management system already handles creating and resuming carts.
Reconsider: Value < Complexity
Punch out tire users
Manage and revisit those same tire quotes without leaving the shop management system their team already works in.
Future
Standalone users
Save a cart and come back to finish it later, so interrupted orders don’t have to be rebuilt from scratch.
MVP
Designing the experience
Guiding question:
Users were frequently interrupted and didn’t want to manually save their work.
Usability testing confirmed a clear preference for saving as you go.
Helping users pick up where they left off
Saving a cart was only half the problem. Users also needed a reliable way to find and resume previous work.
I designed a Saved Quotes page that surfaced key information to help users identify their carts.
After launch
MSO feedback highlighted the need for better visibility into who was creating quotes. This led to the addition of a Created By column to improve tracking and team member accountability
Addressing part availability concerns
During usability testing, we learned that part availability was a major concern. Parts could become unavailable between creating a quote and receiving customer approval.
I introduced alternate part search so users could replace unavailable parts without rebuilding their carts.
Keeping carts organized automatically
Auto-saving introduced a new challenge: how would users know which carts were in progress, completed, or no longer relevant?
I designed a status system tied to meaningful purchasing milestones rather than requiring users to manually manage every cart.
After launch
Users struggled to identify their current cart, so I introduced an Active status.
CREATED
Cart has been saved for later
ORDERED
Items have been ordered. Automatically archived after 30 days.
ARCHIVED
30 days have passed since purchase or user manually archived it. Stored indefinitely.
ACTIVE
Cart is actively being worked on
From a saved cart workflow to a connected purchasing flow
What started as a request to save carts evolved into a dedicated workspace for managing in-progress work over time. The experience grew beyond simply preserving carts to supporting retrieval, inventory changes, team collaboration, and deeper integration with the purchasing workflow.
Connecting parts to labor
We expanded Saved Carts to preserve associated labor alongside parts throughout the quoting and purchasing workflow.
Exploring Saved Tire Quotes
Alongside Saved Carts, I designed a similar experience for Saved Tire Quotes. Although it was ultimately deprioritized due to roadmap changes, designing both experiences together established shared patterns and a cohesive long-term vision.
Results
Strong adoption among standalone (non-SMS) users.
92.9% of users viewing a saved cart re-added parts to their cart.
93.8% of those users completed a purchase.
87.2% end-to-end conversion from viewing a saved cart to completing an order.
5,668 Viewed a saved cart
5, 265 (93%) Added parts to cart
4,940 (94%) Checked out
Designing the right MVP mattered more than designing every workflow
Define the right problem first
Customers asked for saved carts, but discovery showed the underlying workflows and value varied significantly across segments. Prioritizing standalone users delivered meaningful value without taking on SMS integration complexity.
Partner with engineering early
Early collaboration with engineering helped us identify technical constraints and prioritize feasible solutions, shaping an MVP focused on customers with the greatest unmet needs while leaving room to expand.
Shipping is only the beginning
Post-launch feedback drove continued improvements, including an Active status, dealer and MSO enhancements, and labor support. This truly showed how small improvements continued to refine the experience over time.
In hindsight…
I'd revisit the life cycle of created carts. Ordered carts archive after 30 days, but created carts remain indefinitely. Auto-archiving inactive carts while keeping them searchable could reduce clutter as adoption grows.