Petite Plume
Petite Plume is a leading luxury pajama and lifestyle brand with offerings for the whole family and the home.
As a direct-to-consumer retailer, and a rapidly growing one at that, upwards of 20% in annual revenue is generated from the last 3 months of the year kicking off with Black Friday Cyber Monday, a period of time internally donned our “Super Bowl” 🏆🏈.
With a lofty year‑end sales goal, a number so demanding the team wanted to avoid any “Hail Marys” or constant dashboard refreshing until January 1, e‑commerce leadership tasked me to design a mini‑cart upsell—a subtle, on‑flow gift add-on intended to enhance holiday cart value.
Goals:
Design a cart upsell within the already existing mini-cart
Optimize for mobile view
Increase Average Order Value (AOV)
Promote cross-selling
Role:
UI/UX Designer
Project Duration: 50 hours
Tools:
Figma
Shopify
Constraints:
Completing project within allotted time frame
Limited budget
External dev team scoped for certain hours
Working within already existing design patterns + custom modules in Shopify theme
Prior external developers did not leave updated Figma files congruent with current Shopify theme
Preserving check-out flow
COMPETITIVE RESEARCH
When coming up with a solution, as a starting point, I often look to direct competitors and others in adjacent industries to take stock of what’s being done (design patterns, interactions, etc). I then evaluate how that could fit our brand and business goals.
Screenshots of potential patterns to utilize for design
developing the solution
Early iterations
Two options were designed building off of already existing design patterns on our website (i.e. Gift box add-on). Both have a similar mobile view, but different desktop views utilizing a carousel.
Proposal 1: Carousels of product cards on both mobile (two products) and desktop (one product). Desktop features one product to further mimic the already existing gift box add-on in the mini-cart.
Proposal 2: Two product cards on both mobile desktop that moreso resembles the layout on our Product Landing Page (PLP) where you can quick add/quick view products.
I also made a wishlist version of my solutions to be developed if we had the bandwidth, offering a slight visual design update and reordering of information hierarchy to our gift box add-on.
With that, these were passed off to my Creative Director + Director of E-commerce for review and feedback.
Feedback & Iterations
Upon suggestion, I further utilized the Product Landing Page (PLP) as a reference—namely the quick view design pattern (pictured below) as all products offered on the site have a selection to make (size, color, etc) by users.
The other note received was to plug in actual product names into the mock as ours are pretty long so we may need to offer a truncated design if it ends up being obscured.
Taking all of that into consideration, pictured below was the direction we ultimately went with and upon final approval, I then passed it off to the Dev team.
KEY RESULTS & TAKEAWAYS
Results
Average Order Value (AOV), Last Year : $150
Average Order Value (AOV), This Year : $163
Delta : 8.7%
After launching the upsell, average order value increased—demonstrating the solution’s impact and helping us achieve the highest year‑end sales in Petite Plume history.
Conclusion
While the upsell made a difference, it was not as drastic of a number as desired due to new customers skewing the Average Order Value (AOV). A heavy push in paid digital ads grew this segment by ~108% year-over-year, and with first-time shoppers, especially those redeeming their “$20 off $100 purchase” welcome offer, their first‑order was significantly lower, often purchasing a single item. This diluted the overall uplift in Average Order Value (AOV).
Around this time-frame, the free shipping threshold was lowered and subsequently had a negative and immediate effect on AOV. When the threshold was reduced from $150 to $125, average baskets shrank while conversion rates increased.
While these were not ideal conditions, sometimes that’s just the way things unfold in the real world.
On the plus side, we implemented a feasible, brand-aligned solution before our “Super‑Bowl” season without touching the core site. The design offered a gentle, relevant upsell (gifting or small add‑on) that didn’t interrupt checkout or force multiple clicks, aligning with UX best practices to avoid dilution of conversion focus.
Though limited by other concurrent business initiatives, the cart upsell ultimately helped reduce risk (+ stress) and improved margin across tens of thousands of orders.