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Summary
I designed and launched garden membership gifting ahead of Christmas to drive seasonal revenue. I simplified the flow, upgraded the calendar UI, and added receiver reassurance features. Visitors bought 505 gifts worth £32k in three months, with 80% of over 65 year olds who received a gift rating the experience as very easy in a survey. 13 new gardens also initiated partnership discussions.
Problem
- Candide's primary customer, The Newt in Somerset, wanted visitors to be able to gift a 12-month membership to others. This would increase their visitor base and drive revenue over the Christmas period where there is a natural slow-down.
- Visitors could buy a The Newt in Somerset membership from the Candide website, but could not give it directly or transfer it to another individual.
- Candide had 100 support messages since December 2020 from The Newt in Somerset visitors asking if they could gift a membership.
- If Candide didn't deliver a gifting service by Christmas 2021, they risked losing out on seasonal revenue opportunities, dealing with larger support overhead, undermining their relationship with a key customer and weakening their value proposition to other customers.
Constraints
- Small team with an immovable Christmas deadline.
- Candide can't sell memberships for next year if the current year is active; gifting a membership for a year that is ending is obviously bad value.
- The Newt in Somerset and other gardens supported joint and multiple-holder memberships, with some gardens requiring the details of all holders linked to the membership.
What I did
Identified gifter and receiver needs that blocked purchase
- To understand how access works via QR in the Candide iOS and Android app, I spoke to 10 visitors at The Newt in Somerset gate about their entry experience. I noticed first-time anxiety of using QR passes in older individuals (20% of garden visitors are 65+) and connectivity issues due to patchy mobile data coverage.
- To learn about the needs of likely gifters and receivers, I interviewed 5 who'd gifted and 5 who'd received a membership or subscription within 2 years via userinterviews.com. To recruit quickly, the gift could be in a range of attractions, not just public gardens. I asked about their experience of buying, receiving and using, prompting for details such as cost considerations, delivery method, date and more.
- Key themes across gifters and receivers included value for money as the top driver, concern that older receivers would struggle to use a digital gift, a preference for something physical, and the risk of gifting to someone who already has a membership.
I have a very old Blackberry so I couldn't access the app and certainly my parents couldn't access that - I struggle with the NHS app as it is.
Moreen, 59
- For technical inspiration, I reviewed the gifting flows of the largest public garden organisations, the National Trust, RHS and Blenheim Palace. All provided a physical membership, with the National Trust promoting cheaper pricing on condition of Direct Debit and the RHS offering a free pair of binoculars.
Turned insights into a plan that shipped fast
To address the opportunities identified in my research, I wrote 20 'how might we' statements. I used a team workshop to generate and prioritise Now, Next and Later solutions based on complexity. The top statements guided the following design moves.
Designed a simple multi-step flow that reduced errors
- To make things simple for both gifters and receivers, I designed a progressively disclosed multi-step flow with easy navigation, plain language, and ability to recover from errors.
- I designed larger primary buttons, increased spacing between elements to support usability for older recipients, ensuring WCAG AAA standards where possible.
- To support the multiple-holder requirement, the flow would adapt based on whether the garden supports it, requires both names, and whether the gifter chooses multiple holders.
- To reassure gifters that the recipient will be able to use the membership, I included a pre-start link at the beginning that showed what the experience would be like for receivers.
Upgraded the calendar UI to enable advance gifting
Candide had a date picker that visitors used to select a day ticket. However, this didn't support selecting dates far in the future. This was a problem because gifters would likely need to choose months in advance, so I designed a new one that enabled this.
Made the digital gift feel meaningful without print
- I couldn't offer an optional physical insert with a QR code for version 1 due to the timeline, but understood that we would learn a lot from version 1 that we could incorporate into the design of a physical insert.
- To make a digital gift feel meaningful in the absence of a physical one, I added a personalised message at checkout and a polished receiver email.
- To make value obvious for gifters, I'd planned to show how many visits it would take to break-even vs day tickets. However, due to the timeline, for version 1 I opted to front-load the garden imagery and include copy that describes how the garden changes throughout the year.
Solved edge cases to cut support and ease redemption
- To help less technically-able visitors to access their membership, I designed a way to access the QR online instead of via the app, requiring less mobile data. And I incorporated the activation code inside the recipient email, meaning one-click access if already logged in. Visitors could change their details on activation if needed.
- To help receivers without a mobile device or internet connection, I prompted gifters to provide accurate name and email details to enable gate staff look up.
- To solve for gifting to existing members, allowing the choice to extend a membership was the most voted solution in the workshop. However, this is complex from a user perspective and would require more research to reduce risk, so I worked with the team and settled on treating activation as the point of purchase. This meant memberships were pre-paid with no expiry date.
- This solved Candide's constraint regarding selling memberships for following years and made our solution more attractive to other gardens with fixed-term seasonal products. They wouldn't be forced into a rolling membership model.
Usability tested and clarified confusing steps
- I planned to test the gifting and receiving prototype with 5 gifters and receivers in a moderated usability session, but the deadline meant this wasn't doable.
- To identify any major issues with the prototypes in the least amount of time, I instead ran an unmoderated usability test via usertesting.com with 20 participants, being sure to have a proportion of older people.
- All participants except a few due to technical issues completed the tasks. No major issues.
- Some participants weren't clear about how they could attend the garden on a joint membership without the primary holder with them, so I adjusted the copy to make it clearer.
Results
- On launch in November 2021, The Newt in Somerset and other customers activated the gifting feature.
- Visitors bought 505 gift membership orders to those destinations between December 2021 and February 2022, driving £32k revenue.
- 92% of those gift membership purchases included a personal message suggesting gifters found value in the feature.
- 80% of over 65 year olds who received a gift membership over that period from younger groups rated the receiving experience as very easy in a March 2022 survey.
- 13 other potential garden customers who were interested in the gifting feature reached out to have partnership discussions with Candide.
Final designs:
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