Persistent Cart
cxLoyalty is a white-label loyalty platform (acquired by Chase) where cardholders can book flights, hotels, cars, and more using their credit card or rewards points. Our design challenge was to improve the user experience by tackling a major pain point—the cart reset upon session timeouts or sign-outs. We desgined a persistent cart feature, allowing users to retain their selections, even if they left the site. This transformation aimed to reduce friction, improve user retention, and streamline the booking process. I led a cross-functional team of product, tech, and UX designers to create a seamless and intuitive experience.
The Context
CxLoyalty, a leading provider of white-label loyalty solutions, was acquired by JPMC. Previously, users’ carts would automatically clear upon sign-out or timeout, forcing them to search for products again upon returning. To solve this, we introduced a persistent cart feature, ensuring items remained saved even if users left the site. This was a groundbreaking innovation in the travel space, where no competitors had implemented it due to various complexities. I collaborated closely with product, tech, and research teams while leading my own UX team to design and deliver a seamless, user-friendly persistent cart experience.
The Opportunity
In online shopping, 75% of users abandon their carts, often intending to return later. However, on our site, when a session ends due to timeout or sign-out, customers lose everything in their cart. This forces them to restart their search and find the exact flight, hotel, or rental car they had previously selected, creating unnecessary friction in the booking process. Unlike traditional e-commerce platforms, our customers do not have the ability to save or favorite products, making re-engagement even more challenging. By introducing a persistent cart, we have a significant opportunity to reduce frustration, streamline the shopping experience, and drive higher conversion rates by allowing users to seamlessly pick up where they left off.
Requirements & Goals
I collaborated with product and tech teams to define our requirements and align on key goals.
Requirements
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Allow items to be saved in cart
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Items should automatically be saved
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Users should be informed if price or availability changes upon returning to the site
Goals
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Enhance customer retention and revenue by re-engaging 15% of abandoned users, streamlining the booking process, and increasing conversion rates.
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Lay the groundwork for future features such as wish lists, price update alerts, and cart abandonment recovery emails.
Industry & Beyond Exploration
While carts being saved is common in e-commerce, it is not found on sites for booking travel due to the following:
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Volatile prices: Prices are tied to supply and demand which leads to them changing frequently.
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Availability changing: Flights can get canceled or rescheduled and all travel products could sell out.
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Tied to a date: When you add a travel product to a cart it is associated with a day and time.
Defining the Optimal User Experience
After exploring what is out there today and reviewing our requirements and goals, I crafted some key pieces to create a delightful user experience.
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Provide accurate & relevant information
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Provide up to date information in a helpful context to empower users to feel confident when making their booking.
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Ensure the right amount of information is available on the ideal pages.
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Be timely & non-intrusive
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Display helpful alerts in a timely manner in a way that does not disrupt their journey on our site today.
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Guides users
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Enable users to make informed decisions to checkout with their products.
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Ensure that there are no dead-ends in this experience.
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Must be scalable
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The experience should not degrade in quality if there are many items in the users cart that change.
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Design Evolution & Exploration
After having a clear idea of what success looks like for both product and UX, I explored different approaches to solving the issue through iteration involving all stakeholders. These are a few of the concepts we had to work through before arriving to the design we tested.
Alerts
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When should we alert users about items in their cart?
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What style and level of alert should we use?
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How intrusive should we be?
Amount of information
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How much information should we place on the homepage vs. cart?
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Does the solution scale if there are many items in the customer’s cart?
Price changes
How do we show users that their price changed in the cart?
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Availability
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How do we show users if there is limited availability?
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What if something is no longer available?
User Research & Validation
After finalizing our designs, we conducted a round of user research to validate our assumptions and refine our final concepts. I collaborated closely with a UX researcher to carry out this study, which involved interviews with 6 Chase Travel agents and 5 customers. Below are key findings that directly influenced our design decisions.
Trip cart alert
Users wanted clearer details on item changes. We updated the trip cart alert to include the full product name and the exact details of the change.
Payment summary
Users wanted to see the total change when multiple items were in the cart and some mistakenly believed items were reserved. We updated the payment summary to show total changes and added a disclaimer to clarify that items are not reserved.
Low availability
Users wanted clearer details on item changes. We updated the trip cart alert to include the full product name and the exact details of the change.
No longer available
Users wanted more info on removed items from cart and the alert felt like a dead end to them. Both agents and customers mentioned that a way to start a new search would be very helpful. We added in the details and a link to kick off a new search with auto-populated fields.
Overcoming Last-Minute Technical Constraints
After we tested and delivered our designs, we learned from the tech team that it would take 5+ seconds for the alert to appear on the homepage with the details the users wanted. This could easily cause a user to miss the alert and it would cause the page to shift when the alert finally loaded. We had to pivot and consider a new way to draw attention to the cart where users can find more information.
Final Designs
The final design we delivered introduced several new features to enhance the trip cart and checkout process. Explore them below.
Homepage alert
We introduced a homepage alert that has no detailed information so it can appear immediately upon landing on the site.
Detailed cart information
The cart now includes several new features: a detailed alert at the top of the page displaying price and availability changes, each product in the cart showing its specific change, and the payment summary reflecting any adjustments to the trip total.
Item no longer available
Now when an item is no longer available, we show an alert with a link to launch a new search with auto-populated fields.
Clear cart
Now that your cart can accumulate items, we added in the feature to clear your entire cart.
