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Gift Registry Tool

Joy | Cash Gift Purchases

Company
Joy (withjoy.com)
Role
Lead Designer, Registry Team
Timeline
2 months
Team
Product Manager, Engineering
Impact

75% drop in purchase-confusion support tickets

Lifted the support load off a core revenue flow and restored guest trust in gifting.

Joy

Overview

Joy is a wedding website and registry platform. When I joined, I took ownership of a cash-gift purchasing flow that was creating confusion and friction on both sides: guests didn't realize they had to manually finish a purchase, and couples couldn't tell why gifts they'd been promised never arrived. Building on insights a previous designer had gathered, I drove the redesign end to end.

The Problem

Feedback from Intercom and FullStory pointed to the same root issue: a "reserve" that never resolved itself. The purchase depended on a step guests kept forgetting.

Add to Cart & Reserve
guest holds the gift
Buy externally
through an outside vendor
Come back later
easy to forget
Manually mark purchased
the step that got skipped
The resultReservations sat indefinitely with no expiration, so couples chased gifts with email reminders and many never arrived. The flow also defaulted to an unfamiliar payment vendor instead of the cash and check options guests already trusted.

Approach

The redesign came down to one conceptual move, from an open-ended reserve to a completed purchase:

Reserve model · before
A gift was "reserved" on intent. Guests had to remember to return and mark it purchased, so intent and done never met.
Cart & purchase · after
A gift isn't marked as given until the guest completes and confirms the purchase. Intent and done collapse into one step.

I moved the flow from a reserve model to a shopping-cart-and-purchase model: a gift wasn't marked as given to the couple until the guest actually completed and confirmed the purchase, closing the gap between "intent" and "done." I also broke the journey into focused steps (guest information became its own step rather than being bundled in) and removed payment pre-selection so guests could choose a method they already recognized.

Original cash-gift flow.
Screens of Joy's original cash-gift flow using the confusing reserve model
Redesigned cash-gift flow.
Screens of Joy's redesigned cash-gift flow using a clear cart-and-purchase model

Solution

01
Familiar Call to Actions Win

Swapping an open-ended "hold" for words guests already recognized created real urgency instead of an indefinite reservation.

Reserve→Add to Cart / Give Now
02
Single Task Per Screen

Broke the purchase journey into clearer, single-purpose steps, with tactical messaging on each screen and guest information split into its own step.

03
Scalable Solutions

Applied the same pattern to the affiliate-gift flow, and routed guests straight forward after entering their details instead of dropping them back into the cart.

Add to Cart & Reserve→Buy Now
Final cash-gift purchase experience.
Final Joy cash-gift purchase experience showing the completed give-now flow

Impact

Couples who had previously expressed frustration began reporting the opposite: a smoother, clearer experience for the guests giving them gifts, and more confidence that gifts they were promised would actually arrive.

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