The art & science of UX

This week we wrapped a great convo with Sabrina Wong for the Retention Edge podcast.

Sabrina is Head of UX Design at Tapestry (they own Coach, Kate Spade, and Stuart Weitzman). Her experience spans startups, agencies, nonprofits, and Fortune 500 brands, and she also teaches UX Design at universities across the US.

So it’s safe to say she knows a little about the subject.

Sabrina’s one of those people who makes you rethink the entire way you approach customer experience - because for her, UX isn’t just about how your site looks. It's about how your site, and entire brand works, and how it makes customers feel - from the first click to the fifth purchase.

That’s what a lot of people don’t get about UX. They think it’s about driving conversions. But the best UX also builds retention.

Every touchpoint matters. And the ones that matter most are along the buying journey.

People love to buy from you? They’ll come back. They get frustrated with the buying process? You better hope you have an amazing product, or that the customer has a short memory.

You can check out the full episode below, or go straight to Spotify or YouTube to listen to it in your own time.

Here’s what we learned about winning UX, and what it means for brands looking to level up and boost short-term conversions and long-term loyalty.

UX = trust, not just clicks

Sabrina describes UX as the bridge between your brand’s promises and the reality that your customers experience.

When that bridge holds up, customers come back. When it breaks? They don’t (and you usually don’t hear why).

What matters most isn't flashy design or clever copy. It’s:

• Being able to check out quickly, without jumping through hoops

• Knowing exactly what shipping will cost, before the final screen

• Feeling confident about returns

• Not needing to guess if their order went through or where it is

On their own, each small feature of your customer experience that you get right but not seem like a big thing. Altogether, though, they add up.

Showing your customers that you value them, you value their time, and want to provide a simple, convenient buying experience is what earns trust, and trust leads to loyalty.

Common UX mistakes brands make

Brands often shoot themselves in the foot with the same UX pitfalls across the customer journey.

These mistakes show up time and again, turning would-be conversions into lost sales, and eroding any chance of a long-term relationship with the customer.

• Overcomplicated checkout processes

• Forcing account creation for one-time purchases

• Poor inline error validation (e.g. form errors shown only after submission)

• Hiding important info like shipping fees (aka “dark UX”)

Even a clunky return process can break trust. Brands tend to ignore this part of the customer journey. They want people buying products, not returning them, after all.

Yet people who return items are often potential future customers. Returning a product now does not necessarily mean they’re out for good.

Maybe it didn’t fit. Maybe there was a mixup and someone else in their household bought the same thing. Or, like in her case, the original product was a gift.

Too many brands (deliberately or not) make it impossible to figure out how to return something. They send customers through a maze of twists and turns, which redefine the term “friction”.

A pleasing returns process can stoke the kind of good feelings that bring customers back. An overly complex returns flow does the opposite - it annoys the customer, and makes them remember you (for all the wrong reasons).

Most brands don’t engage in this sort of long-term thinking. Those that last, do.

The post-purchase experience

One area Sabrina feels is often lacking is the post-purchase experience.

Many brands zero in on conversions, but they forget that the customer’s experience with your brand continues after they leave your site.

That could mean after someone buys, giving them a clear window into shipping times, where their product is, when it’s on the way.

Or, after you’ve made a purchase, and the product arrives, you stop hearing from the brand. Instead of taking the opportunity to stoke the flames of loyalty, they go quiet; and it’s like having a great first date, then getting ghosted.

The cart abandonment experience is another area that’s falling short. Most brands will send you an abandoned cart notification (email, SMS, push). But they’re usually just all about the sell.

• Message one - You forgot this item in your cart, come back and check out now!

• Message two - Your cart is still here! Check out now!

• Message three - Quick, buy now before it’s too late!

The first message makes sense; but if the customer hasn’t responded yet, pushing harder might not be the answer.

Follow up in messages 2 & 3 with a more nuanced approach. Explain the USP and benefits of the product. Show reviews. Ask the customer what’s wrong, what’s holding them back.

Make it a conversation, not just another transaction.

Striking a balance between data and intuition

Sabrina sees data as a compass and intuition as the map. Analytics tell you what users are doing; design intuition helps uncover why.

This is what elite brands do better than average brands. They don’t make blind decisions based on data. They balance that with intuition, and the human emotions behind that data.

At Tapestry, this balance comes to life through both quantitative data and qualitative research (focus groups, interviews).

Intuition doesn’t come easy. It comes from years of experience, and hundreds of conversations with your customers.

But that’s just why it’s a cheat code. You can’t fake it.

Bridging the gap between in-store and online

Sabrina shared a great case study from their Coach brand, where they developed an AI-powered app for in-store associates that they used to relay customer feedback to HQ to make instant in-store changes.

She sees even more opportunities for stores with both retail and online to bridge the UX; use insights from customers’ online activity to provide a better in-store experience, and use the more personal experience offline to better understand their customers, and what they respond to.

This is just one example of tech (specifically AI) providing a real impact for brands.

Sabrina’s vision for the future of retail & AI includes:

• Smart recognition of returning customers in-store

• AI-assisted sizing and fit

• Unified cart across app, site, and POS

• Improved accessibility standards for websites (leveraging AI to provide better experiences with screen readers and support for inclusive user experiences)

What to fix right now

If your brand is strapped for resources (as, let’s face it, most brands are these days), you might feel like you just don’t have the time for a top-to-bottom UX overhaul.

But it doesn't have to be a massive job. Just by addressing a few low-hanging fruits, you can radically improve your customer experience.

Focus on:

• Mobile optimization (too many sites are still not thinking mobile-first)

• Simplifying your checkout flow (make it easy, and work on building and displaying trust)

• Making key information (categories, add to cart, checkout) clearly visible to the customer (don’t make them think)

If you do want to get a little more in-depth, we made this simple checklist to run through, with a lot of common mistakes that hurt the customer experience, and leave money on the table.

Once you’ve checked off all the boxes, open your site and look at it from a customer’s perspective.

Alongside the items on the checklist, try adding a product to your cart, then carrying on through the checkout process. See where you get stuck, what’s not providing the optimal experience, and fix it.

User experience really is everything. It’s not just about getting people through the checkout - it’s about building the kind of experience that makes someone want to come back.

That’s the secret sauce of brands with a lot of returning customers; not amazing email campaigns or convoluted loyalty campaigns - just a rigid commitment to CX.

Quick Hits

Here’s what‘s worth your attention from around the world of ecom, retail & DTC this week.

Why the Best Brands Are Actually Media Companies

It’s an interesting thought. Attention is becoming so important now; brands that do a great job of capturing (and retaining) attention have a huge competitive advantage over those that have to pay through the nose for it.

Read more →

Want to See How BRĒZ is Doing?

I feel like I’ve been seeing more and more of this brand. Unique product, great branding, amazing transparency in how they operate. And their founder just dropped their revenue numbers for Q1. It’s a fascinating look under the hood of a brand that’s forced to do adopt a different growth plan to your average ecom brand.

Read more →

What Tariffs Mean For Your Business (The CFO’s Perspective)

This is an excellent breakdown of the financial impact of tariffs. Long story short - second and third-order effects that your business needs to account for.

Read more →

Is Your AI-Driven “Creative Testing” Just “Creative Roulette”?

This is an important thing to consider with more brands using Chat GPT (and other AI tools) to rapidly iterate through creative testing. If all you’re doing is throwing things at the wall, with no knowledge of the strategy behind it, you might just find yourself running in circles.

Read more →

US Consumer Confidence at a 45-Year Low

Seems grim. But these are also times where a lot of opportunities open up. Like Buffet says; “be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”

Read more →

Is this the End for Shein and Temu?

The real losers of the tariff wars? Shein and Temu. These businesses (at least in the US) are built upon cheap supply, and of course the de minimis exception.

Now with this gone, it’s tricky to see their current model being sustainable any longer. They’ve already announced they’re raising prices, and they’ve dropped their US ad spend by 31% in the last two weeks.

If they no longer have the ability to offer dirt-cheap products to US consumers, it’s difficult to see a future for them, unless they make some massive changes.

Read more →

Tariff Turmoil Report

Swap Commerce just released a report based on a survey of 100 ecommerce and fulfillment executives, asking their thoughts and predictions for how tariffs are going to impact ecommerce brands.

Key takeaways?

• Around half are looking to switch to domestic supply channels.

• 55% are adjusting their pricing strategy in response.

• On average, 34% of tariff costs will be transferred to shoppers.

• Only 35% of surveyed execs feel their brand is prepared for the changes.

It’s worth a look if you’re still scrambling to plan for life post-tariff.

Read more →

TikTok Lays off Staff in Its US Ecommerce Unit

Among all the tariff craziness, it’s easy to forget that TikTok’s US future is still up in the air. And it may not be looking good, as they appear to be downsizing their US operations.

Read more →

That’s all for now.

Same time next week, I’ll be back with more to help you level up your retention marketing and CX game.

Remember to check out, like and subscribe to our new podcast on Spotify and YouTube.

If you’ve got any thoughts about UX, what brands are doing right or wrong, takeaways you loved from Sabrina’s interview, or just any other topics you’d like to see deep dived in the future, go ahead and reply to this email. I’d love to hear from you.

Until next time,

Pietro and The Retention Edge Team