Caitlin M. Davis
11

Four kinds of evidence,
one line of copy

Experience strategy · LoyaltyEstée Lauder Companies
UX ResearchExperience StrategyProduct & Design LeadershipAI & Insight Systems
Methods
Evidence synthesis Experience audit Competitive analysis Moderated usability testing Co-creation sessions Behavioral analysis
I led the synthesis and the audit. The usability study was run by a researcher on my team.
Inputs and tools
UserTesting Session replay Customer service contact logs Post-purchase review verbatims 15 prior ELC studies Regional insight forums
Four independent evidence streams, none of them collected to answer this question.
The problem

Nine brands ran published loyalty programs. Membership was climbing while the share of members who actually bought was falling: people were joining and then stopping. The programs were not the problem. Members did not always know which benefits were theirs, and the ones who tried to claim them hit friction. A benefit you cannot find, or cannot redeem, looks the same as one that was never offered.

My role

UX subject matter expert across the loyalty theme work. I set what the research had to answer, worked with the brand and global teams on what the evidence meant, and managed the researcher who ran the cart study. I did not run the individual studies.

Approach
  • Reviewed 15 existing ELC primary and secondary studies rather than commissioning a new one
  • Audited 27 current brand experiences across online and omnichannel
  • Analyzed 100+ beauty and skincare sites for competitive pattern
  • Ran 2 lighthouse co-creation sessions alongside 6 ongoing regional insight forums
What it had to answer
  • Why members enroll and then disengage
  • Which benefits resonate across a genuinely diverse base
  • Where the experience breaks between promise and redemption
  • What a single brand can ship without a platform rebuild
Studies reviewed
15
Existing ELC primary and secondary research, synthesized rather than repeated
Experiences audited
27
Current brand experiences, online and omnichannel
Sites analyzed
100+
Beauty and skincare experiences reviewed for competitive pattern
Brands in scope
9
Every heritage brand running a published, structured program
Every recommendation had to be shippable by one brand team inside a normal release cycle. Anything that needs nine brands to move at once never gets built.
/ The convergence
11 / Loyalty experience

Four signals, independently
collected, pointing one way

None of these were collected to answer the same question. Contact logs came from customer service, verbatims from a post-purchase review tool, rage clicks from session data, and the cart study was a usability test on a separate redesign. They agreed anyway. Four instruments that were not built to agree, agreeing, is the strongest form a finding takes.

Two cart wireframes: a shopping bag with a progress note toward a discount and a combined samples and loyalty rewards panel, and the promo code sheet listing available offers with apply controls
The surfaces under testThe rewards panel and the promo code sheet, both above the checkout button. Every participant noticed the progress note at the top and read it correctly.Open full size
Customer service contacts
The largest driver of loyalty contacts, ahead of point expiry, birthday offers, and account setup. Members were calling because something they had earned would not apply.
Operational
Post-purchase verbatims
Review feedback described the failure in members' own words rather than ours. One read: “My loyalty coupon was unable to be applied to my order!” The exclamation mark is the finding.
Attitudinal
Session behavior
Rage clicks on redeem buttons across several brands. Members pressing the same control again and again because nothing explained why it was not responding.
Behavioral
Moderated usability testing
Nine participants, mobile only, two counterbalanced scenarios, run by a researcher on my team. It reached the same redemption rule from a completely different direction.
Evaluative
One unstated rule caused all of it: a reward will not apply until a product is in the bag, and nothing in the interface said so. Members who hit it concluded the program was broken. That is the reasonable conclusion when a promise fails silently.
/ Inside the cart study
11 / Loyalty experience

Nine participants, two scenarios,
counterbalanced

Moderated, mobile only, on the standalone cart redesign. Each participant met a stackable-offer scenario and a conflicting-offer scenario, in alternating order so neither benefited from a warmed-up session. It was not commissioned to look at redemption friction. It found some anyway, and settled a design argument the team had been having on taste.

Flow understood first pass
7/9
Navigated the loyalty rewards flow without hesitation or a wrong turn
Found promo codes unprompted
8/9
The ninth found it immediately once asked whether anything remained to do
Missed the offer limit
~half
Did not register the counter stating that only one offer could apply
Two promo code wireframes side by side: the stackable scenario showing two offers both applied with remove controls, and the conflict scenario showing a warning that the codes conflict with radio buttons to choose one
Stackable and conflicting, both testedOne case where two offers combine, one where the system has to make her choose. The conflict case is where a program either explains itself or looks arbitrary, so testing only the happy path would have missed it.Open full size
The conflict resolution screen showing two competing offers each labeled with its cash value, alongside the updated cart showing the complimentary product added and both discounts itemized in the order summary
Say what each one is worthParticipants named this unprompted as what made the choice easy. Without it, choosing between a free gift and a percentage off is mental arithmetic, at the last step before payment.Open full size
Two versions of the same offer list compared: a plain text list with apply links, and a version with product thumbnails, a loyalty offer badge and a bordered card per offer
The comparison that settled itThe same offers, two treatments. Participants consistently preferred the version on the left, for two reasons: the image showed what they would actually receive, and the badge told them the benefit was theirs because they were members.Open full size
The miss matters more than the wins. The counter saying only one offer could apply was carrying real weight, and about half the participants never saw it. Same failure as the redemption rule above: a rule the system knows and the interface never says out loud.
/ The framework
11 / Loyalty experience

Three principles, so nine brands
did not need nine answers

Nine brands, several regions, one platform none of them controlled alone. Findings addressed to everyone get built by no one, so the evidence was organized into three principles, each tied to a stage of the member relationship and a metric those teams already owned.

01 Seamless experiences

Discovery and engagement. Benefits stay visible across the journey rather than living only on the homepage and the program landing page. A member should never have to go looking for what she has already earned.

Measured on enrollment
02 Targeted engagement

Building relationships. First-party data used to make communications specific rather than frequent. The signal members responded to was recognition, not volume, and the two are easy to confuse when only volume is easy to increase.

Measured on purchase frequency
03 Relevant rewards

Promoting longevity. A mix of product, points, and spend-based rewards, so the program works for more than one kind of member. A single reward currency implicitly assumes a single kind of customer.

Measured on retention and loyalty sales penetration
Brands attached their own initiatives and key results to the principles instead of receiving a list of tactics. The framework was the contract; what each team built against it stayed local. That is the only version that survives nine roadmaps.
/ The intervention
11 / Loyalty experience

The fix was one sentence

Four evidence streams had pinned the friction precisely enough that the fix did not need to be a redesign. One North America brand added a single line of copy above the rewards section: a product has to be in the cart before a reward can be selected. Nothing else on the page changed, which is what makes the result readable.

Loyalty contact rates, month over month
Contact reason
Before
After
Change
Reward redemption
0.23%
0.13%
Nearly halved
Tier point status or expiry
0.09%
0.09%
Flat
Birthday or anniversary offer
0.05%
0.04%
Flat
Benefits, sign-up, account setup
0.04%
0.03%
Flat
The unchanged rows are the point. If every category had fallen, the cause would have been seasonal, or another release, or noise. Three held within a hundredth of a point, and the one the copy addressed dropped by nearly half. That is as close to controlled as a live site gets.
/ An open question
11 / Loyalty experience

The word on the door

One finding had nothing to do with mechanics. Across a review of 50 competitor sites, the overwhelming majority labeled the program in global navigation as some form of rewards. Only a handful called it loyalty. The portfolio ran the other way.

Program label in global navigation
50 competitor sites
Rewards
70%
Loyalty
14%
Other
16%
9 portfolio brands
Rewards
33%
Loyalty
56%
Other
11%

The hypothesis is about framing, not vocabulary. Rewards names what the member gets. Loyalty names what the brand wants from her. Member feedback in the review tool mentioned rewards and points constantly, and loyalty almost never, so the convention tracks how customers already talk. There is likely a search consequence too: people search with the word they already use.

Filed as a hypothesis, not a finding, and written that way: audit terminology sitewide first, then test whether the word moves sentiment before anyone commits to a rename. Fifty sites establish a convention. They do not prove it works.
/ What it produced
11 / Loyalty experience

Ten things to build,
seven things to find out

The brief separated what the evidence had settled from what was still a bet, and labeled which was which. Mixing the two is how strategy documents lose the teams that have to build from them.

01 Ten foundational elements

Enrollment, sitewide visibility, program marketing pages, member exclusives, redemption requirements, order confirmation, exclusive offers, time-sensitive communications, CRM triggers, and point redemption. Near to mid-term, each one shippable by a single brand team.

02 Seven test-and-learn pilots

Extended return windows, members-only pricing, service integrations, bonus point mechanics and others. Each written with an objective, a scope, the resources it would need, and the KPIs that would settle whether it worked.

03 One operational plan

Every element mapped against every brand with a current status, so the next conversation started from what was already done rather than from the framework again. The plan is what turned a point of view into a queue.

A benefit a member cannot find is indistinguishable from a benefit that does not exist. Most of this work was making promises legible.
Similar work

This engagement is available as a scoped package: Usability testing round.

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