Turning customer friction into commercial growth

Context

Tredz sells specialist cycling equipment as part of the Halfords group. Customers arrive informed, often mid-research, and frequently move between commuter, enthusiast and athlete mindsets inside a single visit.

The challenge

Key journeys were converting below expectation. The internal conversation was about form fields and payment options; the commercial conversation was about revenue targets. The two were not connected to each other.

What I noticed or reframed

The hesitation wasn't usability in the narrow sense. It clustered around moments where confidence broke - delivery certainty, fit, and whether this was the right item for how someone actually rides. Checkout was where doubt surfaced, not where it started.

My role

Strategic design leadership across the programme: framing the question, directing research and synthesis, shaping the design response with the team, and translating it into a commercial case senior stakeholders could act on.

What we did

• Mapped behaviour across the whole journey, not the checkout in isolation
• Rethought information architecture around how people actually shop
• Synthesised research into a small number of confidence-breaking moments
• Prioritised changes by commercial impact rather than effort
• Set up structured experimentation so improvement could continue

Results and evidence

The first test delivered a 6% improvement versus baseline checkout conversion. Annualised, an improvement of that size represents a material commercial figure for a business of this scale - but that number is an estimate derived from the conversion result, not directly measured additional revenue, and the more useful outcome was a team able to keep testing.

Lessons and continuing questions

Conversion is usually a confidence problem wearing a usability costume. The open question: how early in a journey can you detect the loss of confidence, before it shows up as an abandoned basket?