NOT ON THE HIGH STREET
Redesigning Checkout to Lift Conversion and Retain More Guest Customers
Over half of NOTHS orders are placed by guests, yet 81% of CS contacts came from them. I redesigned the checkout experience to reduce drop-off, fix post-purchase friction, and give guests and partners a way to actually reach each other.
Role
Lead Product Designer
When
Q2 2026
Focus Areas
Conversion · Retention
Platform
Web · App
Stakeholders
CEO
Product Lead
VP Commercial
Business Development Manager
Customer Service Ops Lead
Context
More than 50% of Not On The High Street checkouts are placed by guest customers.
81% of CS contacts came from those guests.
Partners couldn't reach them, they returned at half the rate of account holders, and the checkout itself was losing customers before they even got there.
Problem
Two compounding problems were eroding conversion and retention.
The checkout was a single dense page, slow and error-prone.
And the guest model, used by 53.7% of customers, left buyers invisible after purchase.
Every issue became a CS escalation, and guests unsubscribed from marketing at 50% higher rates, directly dragging on the 90-day repurchase rate.
Physical image
on the hero section
Make service feel tangible and sell transformation.
Updated headline to reinforce familiarity
Text goes here on two lines goes here
Moving trust
elements higher
Removing need for customer to hunt.
Process
As sole product designer, I led the work from problem framing through to CEO sign-off, pulling in stakeholders from CS, Commercial, and Engineering early. Their data shaped the problem definition before a single screen was drawn.
Investigation surfaced two additional friction points: photo uploads for personalised orders were happening post-checkout, creating confusion for guests and partners alike. And there was no way for partners and guest customers to communicate at all. Both became part of the solution scope.
The process was prototype-led throughout. Using Claude Code and AI tooling, I built high-fidelity flows fast enough to run alignment sessions against real interactions rather than static screens, accelerating decisions across the stakeholder group.
Solution
The checkout was restructured into a stepped flow with progressive disclosure, improved address validation, and express checkout (Apple Pay, PayPal) surfaced upfront. An email-first entry model removed the account decision from the start of the journey entirely.
Photo uploads were moved into the pre-checkout personalisation step, eliminating a whole category of post-purchase friction. A two-way messaging flow was built between partners and guest customers, mediated through NOTHS, so order queries could be raised and resolved without an account.
The Stakes
The business case projected a £0.7m/year TTV improvement in retention, ~£1.06m TTV per percentage point gained in checkout conversion, and ~£60k/year in CS cost savings from reduced guest escalations.