Post-checkout Timed Offers

Creating a sales-boosting feature for merchants in 30 days.

A hand holding a smartphone displaying a green T-shirt on sale for $19.99, marked down from $39.99, with an "Accept Offer" button.

*We got this project to 90% complete before leadership shifted priorities and this project was put on hold.

At a Glance

Role: Lead Product Designer

Goal: Build a new feature offering for merchants to help boost holiday sales

Timeline: 30 days*

I was the lead product designer on this project, which was an initiative to create new product offerings for merchants in 30 days. After a team brainstorm of different options and looking at past requests from merchants, we decided to work towards a new product that allows merchants to offer additional products as add-ons to shoppers immediately after they complete a purchase. This aimed to increase merchants average order value (AOV) without interrupting shoppers’ shopping experience and maximize customers lifetime value.

Due to a tight timeline, we focused on essential features that would allow merchants to manually configure post-checkout offers and view results and insights for existing offers. We wanted the feature to be flexible enough to be used across products (Core checkout and our Accounts package) and for different use cases, so things like an optional discount feature were added for merchants to utilize to provide additional incentive.

Basic flow:

An online store dashboard showing a promotion for post-purchase timed offers to boost sales beyond checkout, featuring a phone displaying a discounted shirt offer.

Merchants view upsell page on the merchant dashboard and sign up for the feature.

Close-up of a syringe drawing clear liquid from a small glass vial labeled 'Vaccine.'
Screenshot of an online store dashboard showing post-purchase timed offers, including images, names, creation and expiration dates, views, conversion rates, statuses, and prices for products like Lightning Lips, Matcha Powder, Early Bird Coffee, and Thai Tea.

Within the merchant dashboard, merchants can view and create their own custom offers.

Order confirmation from Lightning Shop for organic matcha powder, 100 grams, priced at $3.00 after discount, with a total of $3.56 including taxes, and options to add to order or decline the offer.
A black silhouette of a head in profile with a brain illustration and a gear inside it, representing thinking or mental processes.
Screenshot of a digital interface for creating a post-purchase timed offer. It shows a message confirming order receipt with a countdown timer of five minutes. There are options to add to order or decline the offer, and controls on the right for editing product information, offer details, expiration date, timer, discount, and rules.

The creation flow allows merchants to select the product they want to include and add rules to determine when the product would appear.

Close-up of bread rolls with a knife on a cutting board.
Online shopping cart page for purchasing matcha powder, showing a 100g item at a discounted price of $3.00 with a 25% discount, including options to select quantity, size, and add a banner message, with order summary details.

The preview shows what shoppers would see if presented with the add-on.

Close-up of colorful vintage 1950s-style sign with ombre-red and orange text reading 'OPEN' against a textured beige background
Online shopping checkout page displaying a pop-up confirmation for a Matcha Powder purchase with details including price, quantity, shipping, and total amount.

If a shoppers order qualifies, the add-on will appear post-checkout.

This product was designed and built as part of a company wide initiative to build 3 new features in 30 days, so a strict timeline meant doing minimum features for a MVP.

  1. There were significant technical limitations for adding items to a transaction after it was made. Lots of collaboration with the payments team had to happen to identify possible solutions that merchants would be okay with.

  2. A small amount of research showed that merchants were excited by this product idea, but didn’t really know how they would use it yet, so we were comfortable releasing a more manual option for merchants to try before venturing into more dynamic or automated features.

Research

A presentation slide showing options for customizing Shopify checkout and post-purchase pages, such as checkout editing, one-click post purchase offers, and thank you page editing, with a call-to-action button.

Basic findings:

• Most options reqired the merchant to choose the product that would be the add-on

•

Online purchase checkout page for a cereal kit, showing an image of the kit in a purple box and a discounted price of $10.00, with options to buy or decline.
A smartphone displaying a post-purchase offer for a green kettlebell with a discounted price and options to decline or add to order.
A presentation slide describing post-purchase upsell pages for Shopify stores, featuring examples of product offers, pricing details, and call-to-action buttons, with A/B testing and targeting options.

Design & Development

Design for this project started at the same time as engineering so there was a lot of collaboration between myself and the engineering team.

We talked through several options for how to best achieve a viable product that merchants would have affinity for, while still being able to hit our timeline.

A lot of discovery was done through documenting open questions on how we might be able to build this new feature.

Screenshot of an online shopping site with a pop-up offering free shipping if a specific offer is claimed within a countdown timer. The pop-up displays images of three clothing items: a pink and black jacket, a pair of blue jeans, and a light blue t-shirt.
Screenshot of an online order confirmation page from 'Homes That Click', showing order receipt, items (pink lipstick and blue jeans), shipping details, and order summary, with a countdown for free shipping offer.
Screenshot of a chat conversation discussing product catalog API, order delay, Google Analytics, and inventory management, with highlighted text about setting order processing time to 5 minutes.

Requirements

Two major requirements came out of the competitor research, conversations with our Go-toMarket team and internal team discussions to determine what a minimum viable product looks like.

  1. Merchants must be able to create their own offers.

  2. Some performance metrics need to be shown to merchants to gauge how an offer is performing.

  3. The add-on must be added to the initial transaction

Screenshot of an analytics dashboard with insights on offer views, conversion rate, and total dollar amount, showing upward trends.

Compromises

Online product search interface showing options for Matcha Powder and Early Bird Coffee.
Online discount input form with optional discount amount field and percentage sign.
Screenshot of a rules section with instructions to display a product offer if the cart contains certain items, including a search box and a link to batch enter reference IDs.
Screenshot of an online store dashboard titled 'Post-purchase Timed Offers.' It promotes boosting sales beyond checkout with a large graphic of a hand holding a smartphone displaying a green t-shirt on sale for $19.99, crossed out $39.99. The left sidebar has menu options like Home, Analytics, Checkout, Post-purchase Offers, Transactions, Subscriptions, Fraud Protection, Payments, and Administration.
Silhouette of a person holding a phone in one hand and a briefcase in the other, walking past a glass building during sunset.
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Screenshot of an online store dashboard showing post-purchase timed offers for products, including images, names, creation and expiration dates, views, conversions, statuses, and prices.
Online shop dashboard showing a product page for matcha powder, including product details, insights, and cart contents.

future features

  • additional metrics for performance monitoring

  • additional rules to set up offers such as total cart value, customer info, etc.

Proposed Metrics

% accepted offers

AOV increase

Individual Offers: Views (as an interim to determine if it was being shown based on the rules.