Driving adoption with a loyalty offering that delivers

I led design for a one of a kind Rewards program that, focuses on long-term relationship, and customer retention, while maximizing value for the customer.

Role:
Senior Product Designer

Results:
Current adoption rate is at 35%, and our third order retention is at a high of 47.55%

Background

Customer retention is a top priority for merchants, as returning customers and subscribers significantly impact long-term business success. While traditional loyalty programs often rely on complex point-based systems, effective retention strategies require loyalty solutions that foster lasting customer relationships.

Our current offering was limited to a basic membership program that didn't provide merchants with the tools they needed to meaningfully improve customer retention rates.

Identifying the problems

Uncovered through extensive research involving over 50+ merchant interactions, including marketing events, check-in’s, sales calls

Tool Fragmentation
Merchants struggled with managing multiple disconnected tools from different providers. This fragmented technology stack created several problems:

  • Increased operational complexity and costs

  • Poor integration between different tools

  • Limited ability to leverage data across tools

  • Time-consuming implementation and maintenance

Poor User Experience
The current loyalty program's design created significant friction for customers:

  • Current offerings required customers to navigate to a separate page and in some instances, outside the subscription flow to manage their points

  • Reward redemption process was unnecessarily complex

  • Customer engagement suffered due to these usability barriers

Lack of Customization
The standard, one-size-fits-all approach of existing loyalty solutions fell short of merchant needs:

  • Inability to tailor experiences for different customer experiences

  • Restricted options for engagement strategies

Goal

Recharge’s current loyalty offering - Rewards had a mere 8% adoption. Our immediate goal was to raise it to 25%

How we plan on achieving this goal
The current loyalty program's design created significant friction for customers:

  • Consolidate multiple retention tools into a single, comprehensive platform

  • Deliver a highly customizable experience to merchants that provide value to customers through an intuitive reward experience

  • Increased merchant and customer engagement of features

What I designed and built

Credits > Points: Unlock real ROI

Existing loyalty programs are point-based—like earning points for buying coffee or airline tickets. After talking to small-medium merchants we realized that that they often struggle to see ROI, as points accumulate without driving redemption. Points feel abstract, requiring customers to save up for larger rewards, which delays engagement and limits their value.

To solve this, we introduced credits—a 1:1 dollar-value reward, that replicates real cash, given as percentage cashback or fixed amount immediately after purchase.

Unlike points, credits feel like real money and can be used right away, encouraging instant redemption — creating customer value and ensuring measurable ROI through increased retention.

A complete rewards experience

Collaborating closely with the VP of Product, I designed foundational components—such as conditional branches and trigger nodes—that power reward-specific workflows.

I designed every reward-flow, that allow merchants to create create tiered, milestone-based, and standard credit reward-on-purchase experiences, among others, supporting nearly any reward strategy.

These flows seamlessly interfaced with customers, informing them about rewards and facilitating effortless redemptions throughout their journey as a subscriber.

Let customers choose their own rewards

One-size-fits-all rewards don’t always hit the mark. To fix this, I designed a flexible, customer-first system that lets merchants pick rewards that truly matter — whether it’s free gifts, credits, or discounts.

By collaborating closely with merchants, I designed an experience that not only increased redemption rates but also strengthened the emotional connection between customers and brands, fostering lasting loyalty. The result? A simple, intuitive interface that makes redeeming rewards both effortless and meaningful.

Reduce churn with unused & upcoming rewards

I addressed the challenge of reducing customer subscription cancellations by leveraging unused and upcoming rewards—often overlooked opportunities to retain users. To tackle this, I designed a system that gently nudges customers by surfacing reminders of unused credits during the churn flow.

By creating strategic notifications and customizable prompts, I crafted an experience that encourages customers to redeem rewards when considering cancellation. This approach not only increased retention but also turned potential churn into renewed engagement.

In one use case, this feature prevented over 150+ customers from churning by incentivizing them to apply credits and retain their subscriptions instead of canceling.

over 1+ million customers rewarded!

We switched to Recharge’s credit system because our old loyalty program caused support issues and didn’t integrate well. Now all our tools and customer accounts are in one place, and credits are easier to use since they offer direct monetary benefit.

Natasha Whiting, CEO, Kollo Health

Where we’re at currently

Rewards is available through Retain, an add-on for merchants on Standard and Pro tiers. Merchants set it up and customize it via the merchant portal, while customers interact with it through the customer portal.

Our current adoption rate is at 35%, and our third order retention is at a high of 47.55% — which is testament to the effort. The typical retention rate in e-commerce is around 31% [Source: Shopify's annual commerce reports, Gorgias report]

Our ongoing goal: Increase adoption to 50%