UX research

Proof of Concept

Originally, Gift Card Deals was pitched as the "Pay Now" counterpart to Honey Pay Later. At checkout, you could either pay over time with no interest or pay now and with a 5–10% discount.

In the war room with the VP of Product, I landed on this rough proof of concept (clad in the blueprint wireframe style I brought to Honey).

Core screens for POC: First hook screen (left), Pay Now tab (middle), and Pay Later (right).

This POC helped us see that there were way too many requirements and pieces of information we wanted to show. So we pared it down to a singular offering, separate from Honey Pay Later.

Just, pay with a gift card from Honey and save. Don't worry about the other stuff (even cash back rewards for now).

This was a new product, after all—we didn't want to spend a bunch of time and resources optimizing prematurely. Ship early and often, gain insight™!

UI Iteration

Now that we had simpler requirements that made more sense, I explored new patterns for this point-of-sale experience. I wanted to make it feel legit but also lightweight, so I decided against reusing Honey Pay's XXL modal (which was designed for higher stakes flows like banking and lending).

UI exploration (left to right): Branded base layer, elevated sticky header with contextual information, branded static header with navigation, and Honey Orange virtual gift card.

Settling on a small modal with a branded header/nav, I fleshed out the rest of the screens in the flow.

Final UI direction (left to right): hook screen, "How It Works" overlay, payment method selection, card input, summary screen, and virtual gift card.

Testing User Comprehension

Looking at competitors in the point-of-sale gift card space, I realized that the mechanics of the deal are not as well-known as other financial products. For this type of product, shoppers buy a gift card from Honey amounting to their order total, but at a discount.

This is where the deal comes from—We're able to offer a 5%–10% discount through a wholesale gift card vendor.

A common hesitation users have with Honey products (which are all free) is "what's the catch?" Users need to know the mechanics of the deal to feel safe and motivated enough to follow through. So we needed to make sure we land on a compelling but easy to understand messaging on the hook screen (first entry point for this product).

I worked with the Product Messaging team to come up with variants to quickly test user comprehension on Usability Hub. I set up the test to show a 6-second glimpse of the hook screen and asked "What is this product or service offering?"

The control sample had the least amount of messaging

Experimental variants on the heading, contextual branding (Adidas logo), receipt structure, and Honey Wallet explainer.

Surprise! Simpler is better, significantly outperforming the others, despite explaining more upfront. Product leadership was excited about the idea of Honey Wallet, but after these tests we decided to omit that concept and keep the product as simple as possible for now.

Main Flow Screens

Hook screen and empty state for payment methods

Flow for adding cards, with scroll and full-height views

Different states for adding a card

Summary screen with payment method added

Different states for summary screen and virtual gift card

Different state for virtual gift card, dismissible reminder, and access point from the extension popup

Top-of-Funnel Placement: Gift Card Marketplace

After we hit our initial KPIs (main number being $100K USD GMV), we worked on bringing Gift Card Deals higher up in the shopping funnel. At the time, Honey had great engagement at checkout, but we were missing out on top-of-funnel engagement as a shopping destination.

I supported my direct report to get this shipped, dividing and conquering the flow and assets we needed.

Gift Card Marketplace

Outcomes and Conclusion

As of June 2021 (most recent report I have), Gift Card Deals had over 600k users at an 8.8% conversion rate, moving $70M USD, and saving users over $5M USD. Sadly, PayPal recently announced that they will be sunsetting the product by 2024.

I had a blast shipping this product from 0 to 1, leveraging my experience with Honey Pay Later to move at a breakneck speed.