Joy

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.

Feedback from Intercom and FullStory pointed to the same root issue: a "reserve" model that never resolved itself.

• Guests pressed "Add to Cart and Reserve," then had to remember to come back and manually mark the gift purchased after buying it through an external vendor
• Reservations sat indefinitely with no natural expiration, so couples relied on email reminders to nudge guests toward finishing
• The flow defaulted to a pre-selected, often unfamiliar payment vendor instead of surfacing the simple cash/check options guests already trusted

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.

• Renamed "Reserve" to "Add to Cart" / "Give Now" to create real urgency instead of implying an open-ended hold
• Broke the purchase journey into clearer, single-purpose steps with tactical messaging on each screen
• Applied the same fixes to the affiliate-gift purchase flow (e.g. "Add to Cart & Reserve" became "Buy Now") and guests were routed directly forward after entering their details instead of being dropped back into the cart

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.