The Problem

eGifter has a proprietary gift card, called “The Choice Card”, which is simply a method of adding funds to your account balance. You’d either get an email, text message, social media notification, or a physical gift card in your hand that says: “You got a $25 Choice Card!”. Upon further inspection, you’d find you can use its redemption code to add $25 to your account, which could be then used to purchase other items across the site. This would often be a user's first exposure to eGifter.

Got that? Cool.

There also existed Reward Point Systems, which gave points back to you post-purchase, depending on your payment method and other factors. Plus, given that users could hold hundreds of different gift cards in their wallet, including various Choice Cards, it could quickly get confusing and cluttered in there.

Now, few knew what “The Choice Card” was all about. Once they figured it out and added funds to their account, they couldn’t see where all their balances were at the account level or at checkout. Positive user feedback in the interface was nowhere to be found and the instructions as to what to do next were scarce.

Being that “Account Balances” and “Reward Points” systems both existed throughout the entirety of the user journey, the wisest course of action was to first map out the entire user experience, end-to-end, and identify where these elements were being used on the live site. During this process, I conducted user interviews to identify their pain points, confusion, and frustration each step of the way.

Only then would I have the wisdom to address this holistically. First, take in the battle map on the primary use case: “The Digital Choice Card.”