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A checkout that sells the membership

Making product and membership work in the same purchase, for an e-commerce store that sells at cost price

  • Company

    ETIQL

  • Role

    Product consultant and UX lead

  • Team

    Client founders

    In-house designer

    UI designer

    Visual designer

    Shopify developers

  • Tools

    Figma

    Miro

    Notion

    Shopify

  • Client overview

    ETIQL is an e-commerce store founded in Hamburg that sells fashion, home and lifestyle products at transparent cost price. It doesn’t make money from product markups but from the membership, annual or for a single day, that gives access to those prices.

Context

A store that earns from the membership, not the markup

I have worked with ETIQL since January 2021, when the project was still called Onest. I started with the value proposition and the brand sprint with the founders, to give the model a clear shape before the investor pitch.

In 2022 the focus moved to the website. The membership was added to the cart on its own: a 75 € item reached the checkout at 171 €, and nobody had explained why.

The question I started from was simple: why would someone buy this membership? And when is the right moment to tell them about it?

Experience

When to bring up the membership: upfront or at checkout

I took apart, step by step, the checkout of companies using the same model, on desktop and on mobile, and narrowed the choice down to two paths to prototype:

  1. Membership upfront: you discover it before entering the shop and add it to your cart
  2. Membership at checkout: you browse and pick your products, the plans appear when you go to pay

We chose the second: the shop stays open to everyone and the membership comes in when the person already has a reason to want it.

With the relaunch of the e-commerce on Shopify, in summer 2022, that choice turned into six use cases: people buying only the membership, first-time buyers, people with an expired plan. For each one I defined the flow with the founders and led the UI work, the documentation and the handover to development.

Four decisions shaped the checkout:

  1. Choosing a plan is an explicit step in the cart, before paying
  2. First-time buyers are offered the annual plan by default
  3. A one-day pass lowers the barrier for those who don’t want to commit
  4. From the shipping details onwards there is a single checkout for everyone, within the Shopify standard

“The goal is to simplify and clarify the experience, not to reinvent it”

Process and activities

Phase 01

Strategy

  • Discovery
    Discovery

    Value Proposition Canvas and brand sprint with the founders

    Site and analytics assessment

    Benchmark of membership e-commerce stores

  • Analysis
    Analysis

    Hypotheses to validate, defined with the client

    Three buying profiles: discount, quality, awareness

    Interview and focus group plan

Phase 02

Design

  • Definition
    Definition

    Two paths: membership upfront or at checkout

    Six checkout use cases

    Rules for calculating the membership in the cart

  • Drawing
    Drawing

    Desktop and mobile flows and prototypes

    Cart and checkout UI (with the UI designer)

    Homepage and product page (with the visual designer)

Phase 03

Feedback

  • Prototyping
    Prototyping

    Landing pages and ads for each profile

    Checkout documentation in Notion

    Handover to Shopify development

  • Testing
    Testing

    Checkout review in staging

    Test scenarios for every use case

    Cross-browser testing before go-live

Phase 04

Loop

  • Measurement
    Measurement

    Analysis of checkout drop-offs on Shopify

  • Iteration
    Iteration

    2025 review of catalogue, product page and pricing

A closer look at some activities

  • Use case mapping

  • Documentation and handover

Data collected

  • 5+

    Years

  • 6

    Cases

  • 3

    Profiles

  • 2

    Paths

Some of the assets produced

We designed cart and checkout for every use case, from desktop to mobile, within Shopify’s limits

  • The ETIQL homepage, desktop and mobile

    The ETIQL homepage, desktop and mobile

  • The cart with the plan selection

    The cart with the plan selection

What I learned on the project

With ETIQL I learned that the handover to development is part of the project, not the end of it.

The first handover to development, on the login pages, went badly: field states, typography and colour references, and copy in both languages were all missing. We reworked the design system, and from then on every handover went through an approval and written documentation.

I also learned to state dependencies early: in e-commerce my work depends on development and marketing, and it pays to make that clear before promising a date.

Research numbers

  • 3

    Landings

  • 3

    Ads

Value delivered to customers and team

For shoppers a clear plan before paying, for the team a checkout documented case by case.

The new checkout went live in November 2022 with the relaunch of the e-commerce. The first weeks showed where more work was needed: the journey of first-time buyers.

In 2025 I came back to the product to review the catalogue, the product page and how the price is communicated, and to move the checkout towards a single page, starting from the drop-off data.

The plan structure defined back then is the one still on sale: annual with a 30-day trial, and a one-day pass. Today ETIQL reports more than 10,000 members on its website.

Project numbers

  • 10k+

    Members

  • 2022

    Launch

Want to work together?

Read about my experience in the CV below.

Before downloading it, I will ask you a few questions in a short form.

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