StoreHub Membership

Through a series of eight merchant interviews conducted over three months, our team uncovered critical insights that shaped the overall design strategy:

Key research findings:

• Every merchant we spoke to had a different idea of their ideal membership configuration.
• Merchants wanted their members to feel special but were overwhelmed by loyalty program setup complexity
• Birthday collection was universally desired for targeted campaigns, but merchants feared signup friction

Critical insight:

Rather than designing one “best” signup method, merchants needed multiple enrollment pathways that matched their specific customer interaction patterns.

Problem: Different merchant types had completely different customer interaction patterns - F&B could use QR ordering, but retail needed POS-based solutions

Design approach: Created multiple enrollment pathways that matched how different merchant types actually interacted with their customers.

Different enrollment pathways for different merchant types - F&B auto-enrollment vs retail checkout flows

Key design decisions:

• QR ordering auto-enrollment for F&B merchants using table ordering
• POS Seamless QR codes for retail checkout flows
• Direct join links for merchant-specific engagement strategies
• Receipt QRs as the final touch point for joining so a customer can still sign up even after they have left the store.
• Clear membership join source tracking that's visible to both merchants and StoreHub.

Impact: Design enabled diverse enrollment pathways that generated 190,000+ total member signups across business types, with data showing distinct usage patterns that validate the multi-pathway approach.

Problem: Merchants wanted different types of membership programs - points-based systems, cashback, discounts, and free items - but StoreHub's existing promotion system wasn't designed for membership rewards.

Design approach: Rather than rebuilding the entire rewards infrastructure, I designed membership rewards to work within the existing promotion framework while hiding the complexity from merchants.

Key design decisions:

• Four reward types structure: Welcome reward, birthday reward, points store rewards, and tier upgrade rewards - covering the main merchant use cases discovered in interviews
• Mandatory welcome reward: Required merchants to offer signup incentive, ensuring customer value proposition
• Simplified configuration: One-click enable with pre-configured defaults, merchants can customize but don't need to understand the underlying promotion mechanics
• Promotion system adaptation: Mapped membership rewards to existing “amount off” and “percentage off” promotion types with membership-specific constraints (single use, specific validity periods, targeted to individual members)
• Design trade-offs: Had to limit reward types to work within existing promotion constraints, and merchants still need to navigate to promotion pages for advanced customization - not ideal, but enabled faster launch while improving the existing promo UI along the way.

Impact:

• Enabled flexible membership programs without rebuilding core systems
• Onboarding consultants could set up merchant programs efficiently using simplified flow
• Merchants could offer both points-based and cashback programs within one system

As the membership system's complexity grew, I became the bridge for cross-functional collaboration, connecting engineering, marketing, sales, and merchant success teams. My deep understanding of every integration point and ability to communicate with our China-based engineering team enabled me to translate business needs into technically feasible solutions.

When the PM departed, I stepped into product ownership within two weeks, leveraging my comprehensive system knowledge and strong stakeholder relationships. This experience sharpened my ability to think beyond interfaces, shaping full product strategy while balancing technical constraints and business priorities