Increasing successful card applications with a card conversion to a different bank, complete with a new digital experience
The REI Co-op Mastercard is only available to REI Co-op Members. It’s a way for members to engage more deeply with the co-op, by earning even more rewards not only on REI Co-op purchases, but also on everyday purchases outside of the co-op.
After much research and evaluation of REI’s current credit card offering, the team decided to relaunch the card with a new bank, new benefits, and a new digital experience.
The current card offerings were found to be not incredibly compelling or competitive to users. Additionally, the digital experience to apply was not clear about the membership requirements, and created friction in an important decision moment.
We entered the design process for this new platform with two goals in mind:
1. Strengthen the connection between the card and membership, establishing it as an exciting member benefit
2. Reduce friction in the application flow to increase card applications
Tactically, this looked like:
1. Creating the promotional pages within the REI membership ecosystem on the site, rather than on its own microsite as it was
2. Creating a pre-application membership verification flow that helped users get to the happy path
User Flows: Pre-Application Membership Verification
In order to submit an application, the user must:
1. Be an REI Co-op Member
2. Have an REI.com account with their membership linked
3. Be signed in to that account
Given existing friction between memberships and accounts, which are separate records that must be linked by the user, we must help the user get to the happy path. We know that we have the potential for many combinations of factors to present in a user arriving on this application:
1. Signed in / Not signed in
2. If not signed in: Has an account / Does not have an account
3. Member / Not a Member
4. Membership linked to an account / Membership not linked
So, in collaboration with my product design manager, I created flows to represent the path of every combination. Each combination has different jobs to be done in order to successfully apply:
- Not signed in? Sign in or create an account.
- No membership? Join the co-op or link an existing membership.
The project also included a redesign of all site promotional pages. At launch, we exceeded application targets by 34%.
