Capture existing clicks from users and monetize deals found in email promotions

Led design solution to monetize deals in commercial emails by navigating users to Yahoo-designed promotional content to capture users’ clicks, triggering another cycle of shopping

My role

Yahoo Mail Inbox Commerce Design Lead

Duration

Jan 2022 to Nov 2023

Team

2 designers
4 product managers
15 engineers
2 user researchers
1 data analyst

Background

User habit
Users browse commercial emails and click on deals that they find appealing in said emails

Hypothesis
If Yahoo creates a CTA that brings users to additional deals, we can monetize these commercial emails.

Business goal
Capture and monetize a portion of the existing 90% of clicks that happen in message body.

Project overview

Before

Target user

Commerce users: online shopper

Background

Users browse commercial emails and click on deals that they find appealing in said emails

Problem

Yahoo Mail receives no monetization from these existing clicks

Solution

Created Yahoo CTA at the bottom of commercial emails to navigate users to a Yahoo-created “related deals” page to capture and monetize users’ clicks

Outcome

Generated 20% increase in affiliate revenue and created a mechanism to trigger another cycle of shopping

After

Final design

The Destination

After user research, we found that the Storefront view is the right destination because…

Storefront is a group-by-merchant platform to check commerce-related communication: deals, previous emails, receipts, and products.

Storefront view

Outcome

For users
Brings value by navigating to a new avenue to browse potentially appealing deals

For product
Brings more traffic to the already-developed Storefront view, which did not have in-app onboarding and was hard to navigate

For business
Post-purchase experience motivates users to start a new cycle of shopping

Design process

Design process

Bucket #1
Floating Action Button

Cons:

  • Inconsistency with the design system: no other FABs anywhere else, takes more time to acclimate users to new design feature

  • Animation adds unnecessary processing load, possible performance issues on older hardware

Bucket #2
Bottom Navigation Nudge

Pros:

  • Simpler to implement effectively

  • Better scalability

  • Closely aligns with existing design system

Design process

Design Challenge
Balance the user journey of reading the message and the product goal of navigating users to Yahoo’s Storefront view.

Design Solution

In the final design, the Floating Action Button (FAB) appears after the user has scrolled past the Message Header as a nudge to discover/explore further.


The FAB remains hidden if a user is actively scrolling through the page, but FAB expands if the user is briefly inactive. Thus, we preserve the user’s smooth reading of the page.

Design process

Target users

Commerce users: online shoppers

Problem

For product:
Receipt, Shopping, and Storefront views lack in-app onboarding or discovery methods

For users:
Users want to track online shopping activities, but they are not aware of Yahoo Mail’s features that already accomplished their request.

Solution

Utilize the Bottom Nudge as an entry point for guiding users to Receipt, Shopping, and Storefront pages to address user needs

Outcome

  • Generated 20% increase in affiliate revenue and created a mechanism to trigger another cycle of shopping

  • Team member reused my design as the entry point in Newsletter view