Faire is a wholesale marketplace that connects independent retailers with local brands
Faire's mission is to empower retailers to strengthen the unique character of local communities and businesses.
Time
1 month
Team
Designer (Me) Software Engineer Data Scientist Product Manager
Constraint
No UX Research No Testing
Insider is a membership program where retailers get free shipping.
Retailers pay a monthly fee of $19.99 to stay subscribed to the program and gain these benefits. Faire provides free shipping coverage for brands based on shipping distance and also popularity in their category.
🛍️ Free shipping with 100+ brands
💵 No Import Duties
📞 Customer Phone Support
Problem
Annual Insider churn rate has increased by 10%.
Retailers are cancelling their membership because they don't understand the value and benefits of Insider.
My Impact
I re-designed the Insider cancellation flow, decreasing monthly churn rates by 8%.
I worked with product managers, data scientists, and customer success teams.
V1 shipped to 10,000 retailers
Research
From competitive research, I discovered memberships show value.
I used these value principles to guide my audit of the Faire membership program and understand customer sentiment.
Financial Value
Receiving monetary benefits.
Emotional Value
Feelings of delight & reward.
Social Value
Gaining VIP status.
Retailers can't see the financial impact of Insider on their business!
The current cancellation funnel has a 98% cancellation rate
I saw that there was large room for improvement in UX copy, content and visual design
Pause
Benefits screen
.Cancellation form
I leveraged my research to identify opportunities in designing the cancellation flow.
🔍 FINDINGS
98% retailers skip over the pause modal.
→
❔WHY?
Pause is presented abruptly without context.
→
🎯 OPPORTUNITY
Improve the UX of pausing Insider membership.
Retailers don't think the price point is worth it.
→
Unclear financial benefit for their business.
→
Make the savings statistics and benefits more visible.
80% of breakeven retailers have at 3> key brands.
→
A key brand is a brand they've re-ordered 5+ times.
→
Resurface these brands in the cancellation flow as a value proposition.
Hypothesis
If retailers understand the value of their free shipping benefits, they'll be less likely to churn from Insider.
I designed two cancellation flows variants for two retailer types.
From data analysis, the data scientist team discovered a near 50/50 split of two retailer groups cancelling.
Segment #1
"I'm cancelling because I don't understand that I'm saving with my brands."
Sweet Candles
Breaking Even
Segment #2
"I'm cancelling because I'm not saving with Insider since I'm not ordering enough."
Joe's Ties
Not Breaking Even
Challenge #1: Optimizing the flow
What should we include in the cancellation flow?
Retailers often have strong reasons for canceling, so it's crucial to add value without creating unnecessary friction. We discussed adding a discount recovery offer to the cancellation flow to address the lack of financial benefits.
1
Benefits
2
Form
3
Pause
4
Recovery Offer (NEW)
Determining the order of the cancellation flow
The pause option initially appears too early in the cancellation process, making it feel abrupt. By moving it after the benefits screen, retailers are more informed about the membership and likely to consider pausing.
ORIGINAL
No strong reason for why retailers should pause.
CHOSEN
Optimizes for membership retention of keeping their membership
Retailers more willing to pause as a last resort
Challenge #2: Designing the Benefits Screen
I chose to start designing for Breaking Even retailers.
Faire had the most data and proof to win breaking even retailers back as customers. Nonetheless, while designing, I kept the segment not breaking even retailers in mind, and later on made the design extensible for them.
I hypothesized retailers want to stay with Insider for their key brands.
INSIGHT #1
Breaking Even Retailers have "key" brands they've ordered 3+ times before.
Initial design explorations
I explored three differenet designs using key brands to contextualize the value of their Insider membership.
VERSION #1
Breaking down savings across key brands
Statistics don't convey value.
Unclear messaging.
VERSION #2
Social proof of Insider value
Text-based savings are more relatable.
Multiple messages dilute the primary message
CHOSEN
Loss aversion of Insider benefits
More motivated to avoid losing benefits.
Coherent sticky message.
Midway feedback
I shared my designs explorations with the customer success team and discovered a core insight.
INSIGHT #1
Key brands don't matter to churning retailers.
It's extremely hard to predict what brands we think retailers want to continue getting free shipping with.
Back to the drawing board!
I pivoted from highlighting key brands to a large quantity of brands.
I decided to help retailers visualize the quantity of free shipping access they have in their membership.
BEFORE
Key Brands
AFTER
Large Quantity of Brands
Content Design
I explored different layouts to display all the brands.
VERSION 1
Brands at bottom of the screen
VERSION 2
Brands at the top of the screen
CHOSEN
Action buttons + brands side by side
See entire membership in one view.
Allows making informed decision.
I explored how to label all these brands.
This is not a discovery point. Retailers aren't shopping here, so I chose to emphasize access to top brands with free shipping.
VERSION 1
Contextualizing brands
CHOSEN
Tagging as "Top Shop"
Final Touches
With the main design decisions made, we refined the nitty gritty details for both retailer segments.
Segment #1: Breaking Even Retailers.
🖊️ Copy Decisions
Added the definition of what total savings means.
🎀 Styling Decisions
Visually call-out the savings metric.
Segment #2: Not Breaking Even Retailers.
VERSION 1
Projected annual savings
CHOSEN
Showing how easy it is to break-even
Challenge #3: Re-imagining pausing
Retailers don't know what they're getting themselves into.
Pausing is crucial to retailers who expect lower order volume in upcoming months. However from data, we found that pause rates were at an all-time low. I discovered that the pause UX was unconvincing and has poor copy.
🔴 Unclear Context & Copy
Why should users pause? Can they resume anytime?
🔴 Styling Decisions
The abrupt pop-up is intrusive.
I hypothesized retailers would be more likely to pause their membership if they see the full details upfront.
Instead of presenting pause as a modal in the first step of the flow, I moved it to be after the benefits screen. I decided to make pause its own step because it is an important decision that requires the user's full attention.
Final Designs
MISSION SUCCESS
We shipped Phase 1 of this flow to 10,000+ retailers!
Grateful for the journey! Here's what I learned....
Data doesn’t tell the entire story
We had more data than we could work with. But without qualitative research, we wouldn’t have understood the full picture of the problem.
Know what type of feedback to ask for
I worked with PM and engineers of all shapes; Some didn’t want to get into the nitty gritty details of design. I also worked with senior staff designers who knew almost nothing about the project. So knowing what feedback to ask for is valuable in getting useful and good feedback.
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