Delivering a simplified subscription experience that improved customer control and boosted AOV by 5%.

Context

Role

Lead Product Designer

Project status

🚀 Launched

Timeline

3 Months

Team

1 Product Manager,
2 Engineers

Nuts.com is a DTC snack brand offering over 3,000 products through both one-time purchases and subscriptions. While most revenue comes from one-off orders, subscriptions generate millions in recurring revenue annually. Despite their smaller share of revenue, subscriptions were a major source of customer friction.

As the lead product designer, I owned the end-to-end redesign of the Nuts.com subscription management platform for 26K+ active subscribers.

Before Re-Design

Problem

The system managed subscriptions at the product level, but customers thought in shipments.

Customers expected to manage their subscriptions by shipment, but our system managed each product on its own schedule. This created multiple separate shipments, surprise fees, and unexpected deliveries. Instead of feeling rewarded for subscribing, customers felt penalized. The impact was severe: churn rates were high, and 92% of canceled subscribers never returned to Nuts.com.

Fixing this misalignment by shifting to shipment-based subscriptions represents a major opportunity to rebuild trust, improve retention, and increase lifetime value.

Challenge

Make subscription management feel intuitive and flexible, without breaking what already works.

Despite contributing millions in annual recurring revenue, subscription management at Nuts.com was a major source of churn and frustration. Customers didn’t understand how products were grouped into shipments, when they would arrive, or how to make changes without triggering unexpected fees.

Support teams flagged it as one of the top drivers of complaints. Internally, we knew this was hurting retention and limiting long-term growth.

The solution needed to feel clearer and more trustworthy, without disrupting active subscribers or overhauling the backend.

Project Constraints

• No A/B testing: We had to get it right before rollout.
• Minimize disruption: Changes needed to preserve existing behavior.
• Back-end limitations: No major engineering rebuild allowed.

Success Metrics

1. Increase Average Order Value (AOV)
2. Improve Retention and Lifetime Value (LTV)

Discovery

I surveyed over 600 customers and followed up with 14 in-depth interviews to understand why subscribers were churning.

My research revealed what subscribers valued, where the experience broke down, and why they chose to cancel. The insights from four surveys and 14 interviews became the foundation for the redesign. Below are the three most critical pain points uncovered.

❌ problem #1

Unexpected shipments and surprise fees

The “Add Items” modal accounted for 16% of new product subscriptions, but most users didn’t notice it. For those who did, the experience was limited, they couldn’t search the full product catalog because no search functionality was available. This made it harder for users to build their basket or discover additional items.

❌ problem #2

Key actions were hard to find, and terminology was unclear

Many users found it hard to manage their subscriptions with confidence. Common actions, such as “Cancel Product Subscription”, were placed in secondary menus, making them hard to locate. There was also no way to merge or organize multiple shipments, which added friction for customers managing larger orders. Language throughout the interface contributed to confusion. Several users weren’t sure whether “Remove from Shipment” would cancel the product entirely. This lack of clarity led to accidental changes and increased support requests.

❌ Problem #3

Limited add-to-basket functionality

Requirements

Insights from research helped define key user and system requirements to guide the redesign.

User experience priorities

• Make critical actions easy to find
• Reduce surprise fees and shipments, and increase control
• Support value-maximizing behaviors (ex: shipment grouping, free shipping threshold)

System constraints and design strategy

• Keep the existing two-page layout to reduce cognitive load for existing users
• Only introduce new patterns where necessary to improve clarity or usability

Usability testing

I conducted three rounds of usability testing to refine the design from low-fidelity wireframes to the final prototype.

Since we couldn't run an A/B test, I used three rounds of usability testing to validate the design before launch. I started with low-fidelity wireframes to confirm the overall structure and navigation. From there, I tested mid-fidelity wireframes with external participants to refine task clarity and labeling. Finally, I validated the high-fidelity prototype with real subscribers to ensure the design aligned with actual behavior and expectations.
This iterative approach helped me identify usability issues early, refine interaction details, and reduce risk before handoff.

Iteration

Below are two key changes I made based on usability insights:

Finding #1: Overview Page Upsells Created Misleading Expectations

I introduced upsell options on the subscription overview page to promote product discovery. But during usability testing, I learned that these prompts unintentionally gave users the impression they could manage more aspects of their subscription than was actually possible. Specifically, when users added a product, they weren’t sure which shipment it would be attached to. This lack of clarity created unnecessary friction and led to confusion and frustration during what should’ve been a simple action.

Solution – Removed Upsell Button from the Overview Page

To reduce friction and align better with user expectations, I removed the upsell elements from the overview page. Since this update wasn’t A/B tested, I focused on delivering a clean and predictable experience at launch. Upsell opportunities aren’t off the table, I intentionally scoped them out for future experiments where we can better control for user intent and measure impact.

Finding #2: Out-of-stock alerts were hard to connect to the right product

Originally, out-of-stock alerts appeared in a banner at the top of the subscription page. Testing revealed that users had trouble figuring out which product was affected. Many scrolled through the entire list to find the issue, often missing the shortcut that let them set a backup product.

Solution – Contextual, product-level out-of-stock alerts

To give users immediate clarity, I placed the alert directly on the affected product card and built logic to surface that card at the top of the shipment list. This made it faster for users to recognize and resolve the issue.

Final Design

✅ New Design – Page 1:

Subscription overview that showcases shipment groupings

I redesigned the overview page to give customers a clear, reliable view of their active subscription shipments. The old logic grouped items loosely by next ship date, so products with different frequencies appeared together once and then split apart, making it hard to track what was shipping when. The new page fixes this by showing only true shipment bundles, items that share the same frequency and ship date, and preventing mixed‑frequency bundles altogether. This simplified model reduces confusion, makes subscriptions easier to manage, and restores trust in the system’s display logic.

✅ New Design – Page 2:

New shipment details page for easier bundle management

When I joined, managing subscription shipments was a time consuming experience because frequency had to be updated individually for all items in each shipment. Customers had to update each item separately, skipped products disappeared from view, and core actions like adding items or canceling a subscription were buried in menus.

I redesigned the shipment details page as a single control center for every shipment. Customers can now update a bundle’s frequency in one step, move or merge items between shipments, see skipped products alongside active ones, and personalize each bundle with names or backup items. Key actions such as “Add items” and “Cancel subscription” are now surfaced prominently with clearer language. These changes simplified a once‑confusing process and, in usability testing, were some of the most celebrated improvements by Auto‑Delivery subscribers.

✅ New Feature 1:

New “Add Items” modal with search

Although 16% of new subscriptions were added through the portal, most users I spoke to didn’t know this was possible. On mobile especially, they expected to be able to add products as part of managing their existing shipments, but the experience didn’t support that.
‍
The original upsell modal only showed a small, static list of recommended items, with no way to browse or search across the 2,500+ auto-delivery eligible SKUs. To meet this need, I introduced a new add-items flow with full search and lightweight recommendations. This allowed users to stay in context and quickly find the exact products they needed, without starting from scratch or switching channels.
‍
In testing, the new flow was immediately understood and frequently cited as a major improvement.

✅ New Feature 2:

Easily reassign products between shipments

Previously, customers couldn’t move individual products between Auto‑Delivery shipments, a common source of frustration for those trying to consolidate or stagger deliveries. I introduced a new interaction that allows users to reassign items across bundles, giving them more flexibility and control over how and when their products ship.

✅ New Feature 3:

Keep skipped products in their original shipment

In the previous portal, skipping an item once could permanently decouple it from its original shipment, creating confusion and extra work for customers trying to track their orders. In the new design, skipped products stay attached to their shipment, preserving bundle integrity and making subscription management more predictable.

New components

Purpose-built UI components for flexible subscription management

To support the full redesign of the subscription portal, I created a new set of UI components tailored to the complexity of subscription workflows. Aside from a few foundational elements (like quantity adjusters and text inputs), nearly every part of the interface, from shipment cards to the add‑item flow, was designed from scratch. Each component was built with reusability and scalability in mind, and several have since been adopted across adjacent areas of the product.

Developer handoff

Clear specs to support fast, accurate implementation

Once designs were finalized, I prepared detailed implementation notes to reduce ambiguity and support engineering handoff. This included breakpoint specs for responsive behavior, logic for conditional states, and skeleton loading patterns to ensure smooth transitions. I collaborated directly with engineers throughout QA to ensure edge cases were accounted for and shipped as intended.

Impact

New subscription management experience lifted AOV by 5%

Launched on June 20, 2025, the redesigned subscription portal showed a 5% increase in average order value among active subscribers. While not A/B tested, the direction was shaped by qualitative research and validated through multiple rounds of usability testing.
‍
Reach:
• 26.4K subscribers
• $200K in weekly recurring revenue
• $10M+ ARR

Reflection

Redesigning the subscription portal surfaced several principles that shaped both the experience and the way I worked:

Design for high-retention users first.
Focusing on the needs of our most loyal subscribers, those who order frequently and retain over time, ensured the redesign aligned with the workflows and expectations that drive the most business value.
‍
‍When you can’t A/B test, test what matters most.
In the absence of experimentation, we prioritized usability testing for high-risk flows. Validating directly with real subscribers gave us the confidence to move forward without guesswork.
‍
‍Not every feature needs to ship at once.
We made intentional trade-offs—delaying advanced upsell logic and simplifying out-of-stock backup options, to focus on stability and clarity for launch. This helped avoid friction for existing users.
‍
‍Cross-functional alignment starts with shared insight.
Collaborating closely with marketing and support grounded our rollout strategy in what subscribers actually valued, based on firsthand research, not assumptions.

Go to next project

RTA cabinet store product page re-design