Turning forgotten store credit into a checkout moment.
Instant credit was being issued regularly but rarely used. We redesigned where and when it showed up in the shopping journey, turning a post-return artifact into a checkout driver worth $800K in recovered value.
A visibility problem dressed up as a redemption problem.
After a return, American Eagle issued instant credit via email. A gift card number and PIN sent to an inbox, waiting to be remembered at the right moment. It usually wasn't.
UX partnered with product and engineering to explore a different approach. Not a platform overhaul. Not a new loyalty feature. Just getting credit in front of customers at the moment they were already shopping.
The constraint was clear from the start: gift cards could not be applied in the shopping bag, could not be stored on an account, and could not be combined. Working within those limits turned out to be clarifying rather than limiting.
My contributions
Strategic context
Problem & Solution
From out-of-band artifact to in-flow value
The existing experience treated instant credit as something customers needed to track and remember on their own. The redesign treated it as something the product should surface automatically, at the right moment in the right context.
Credit issued in a place customers weren't looking
Gift card emails required customers to remember they had credit, find the email, locate the number and PIN, and manually enter it at checkout. Every step was a drop-off point.
Surface the credit where customers were already shopping.
Display available credit in the shopping bag with clear labeling. Enable one-tap application of up to three credits at checkout using familiar interaction patterns. No new platform. No account features. Just better timing.
Key tradeoffs I made
Research
The credit wasn't lost. The moment was.
We analyzed how other retailers surface store credit and gift cards, specifically looking at discoverability during shopping and in-context application at checkout.
The pattern was consistent across competitors: retailers that surfaced credit at moments of purchase intent saw higher redemption, even without storing or saving credit anywhere in the account.
Out of Band
How credit was issued
Email with gift card number and PIN, disconnected from the shopping flow
High Friction
The application experience
Customers had to remember, find, and manually enter credit at checkout
Lost Value
The outcome
Credits expired, were forgotten, or required re-issuance at operational cost
"Customers were not intentionally ignoring credit. They simply lacked visibility at the moment it mattered most."
This reframed the entire design challenge. We weren't fixing the credit. We were fixing the timing.
