Payment & Retention Flows — Hypeal

01Context

The customer side

This is the other half of my work at Hypeal, not the merchant side, but what their customers see.

Pop-ups, upsells, and VIP redemption are the moments where a shopper either engages with the loyalty program or scrolls past it. None of these existed before me. The stakeholders wanted them, and I designed all of them from scratch.

The tricky part: these had to convert without being annoying.

02The Challenge

Designing from nothing

The challenge was designing these from nothing. No existing pop-ups or upsells to improve. I needed to figure out what to show, when to show it, and how to make it feel like part of the merchant's store rather than a third-party add-on.

The questions I had to answer:

When in the shopping journey should upsells appear?
How do you make a pop-up feel branded and trustworthy, not spammy?
How simple can VIP redemption be while still feeling rewarding?
How do you make all of this customizable for every merchant's brand?

03Design Process

Iterating toward seamless flows

The direction came from stakeholder reviews and weekly team meetings. Based on what the team needed, I iterated on different approaches in Figma and validated through feedback sessions with the CEO and team.

For each touchpoint, I explored different approaches in Figma: inline vs. overlay, minimal vs. detailed, persistent vs. dismissible, and validated through feedback sessions with the CEO and team before committing to high-fidelity designs.

I explored different approaches for the pop-ups, balancing visibility with subtlety. Full-screen overlays felt too aggressive. Small banners got ignored. The final version, a slide-up card with branded colors, clear value proposition, and a single CTA, landed in the right spot based on team feedback.

04The Solution

Loyalty woven into the experience

Contextual Upsell Cards

Designed the upsell as an inline card that appears when the customer is heading to checkout, showing relevant add-on products and VIP benefits at the moment they're ready to buy.

Branded Retention Pop-ups

Designed branded pop-ups for the customer journey: a login prompt for VIP access and a personalized welcome message showing membership benefits and offers.

Streamlined VIP Redemption

Simplified the VIP redemption flow by removing unnecessary steps so customers get to their rewards faster. The flow guides customers through a quick unlock sequence: loading, confirmation, and card reveal, without unnecessary steps.

Branded Previews for Sales

For 14 potential merchants, I created custom branded previews: VIP cards in their colors and storefront mockups showing how pop-ups and the loyalty experience would look on their shop. This gave the sales team something concrete to show in every pitch instead of describing features.

Branded VIP card mockup — client 1 — Branded VIP card mockups — each tailored to a potential merchant's brand

05Impact

Impact

20+

Screens designed from scratch

14

Branded mockups for merchant sales

2

Live Shopify stores using the designs

Designed the complete customer-facing loyalty experience from scratch: upsells, pop-ups, and VIP redemption
Simplified the VIP redemption flow by removing unnecessary verification steps
Designed the pop-up system: login prompt, welcome message, and upsell card
Designed 14 branded mockup sets used by the sales team to pitch merchants
Validated all designs through feedback sessions with CEO and team

06Reflections

Reflections

Designing both sides of the product, merchant dashboard and customer-facing flows, gave me full understanding of two-sided product design. Every pop-up I designed had to feel native to different merchant brands, not like a generic third-party add-on.

If I did this again, I'd push for A/B testing from day one. Every pop-up timing and upsell placement is a guess until real traffic proves it right.