Case Study

Out There Rewards

This case study explores the transformation of Kathmandu's loyalty program Summit Club into the Out There Rewards, from its initial concept and proposition to the creation of an interactive online member hub and subsequent branding and advertising.

Industry: Retail
My Role: UI/UX Design, Research, Journey Mapping, Visual Design
Tools: Figma, Miro, Confluence, Azure DevOps, Adobe After Effects
Launched: September 2023

Project Overview

Kathmandu is the leading outdoor fashion retailer in Australia and New Zealand. In 1987, the brand launches along with it’s loyalty rewards program Summit Club. This loyalty program focused on a transactional approach of a spend and save model only rewarding customers for spending. In 2021, Kathmandu went through a major rebrand, repositioning themselves to no longer be the ‘top of the mountain’ hardcore adventure brand, but the fun-loving, out there ‘outside makes us happy inside’ brand, focusing on the positive impact that nature has on us. However, the original loyalty program had been left behind, still advocating the outdated brand proposition.

To address this, a new loyalty program was born. Out There Rewards.

Goals and how we approached them

1. Drive acquisition and gain new members who connect with the brand
2. Improve cusotmer experience across all touchpoints
3. Bring UI up to date
4. New ways to reward customers that aren’t just spend

Research

We identified from our research that the onboarding process caused a lot of friction, especially surfacing a major problem where by when a customer signs up in-store, they would have to sign up online again in order to make their online account, a huge problem. We wanted to look at these frictions, and find a great solution so our customers could enjoy a much better onboarding experience. Developing new flows, for both in-store, from QR codes around the stores and online, adding an extra layer of security by introducing two factor authentication. We forsaw that this could have an uplift of upto 36% in acquisition of new members in our online hub.

Ideation

Taking into the challenge we had in front of us, I started off the project by mapping out the information architecture of the website hub and worked with the team to change the layout of information in a way that is intuitive.
Introducing tier levels, challengers, surprise gifts for higher levels to receive throughout the year and gifting AllTrails memberships were all ideas that could enhance a members experience with the program.

Visual Identity

Developing a look and feel that stays true to our overarching brand, while also having a clear identity for itself. Special Group Australia was brought in to look at the logo design and set some initial parameters and colour palette, but from then on out, I led the UI for the members hub. I wanted to create something joyous, light and introduce elements and textures of nature, after all, we’re encouraging our customers to live their best life outdoors.

Impact / Next Steps

A point of friction we noticed through analysing overall engagement, was the uptake in using reward vouchers in our e-commerce site. We wanted to help make this a lot easier by showing them their available vouchers in their checkout journey. Initial results have shown this to have a positive impact on the experience while shopping online.

This is just one of many iterations that are in the works for the next phase of Out There Rewards. Specially, we found from analysing behaviour that members acquired online from our website was 8.7% less than we predicted year on year.

Conclusion

The redesigned Out There Rewards Loyalty Program has received positive feedback from customers, indicating a significant improvement in overall user satisfaction. New members accounted for an increased $310.3M year to date, with an uplift of 32.8% in acquisition of new members, slightly lower than our predicted outcome. Other key metrics included year on year 2023-24, user engagement up +6.7%, average transaction value up +3.9%, shop frequency for members -2.3%, and redemption of vouchers led to an additional $4.54M revenue or 31,672 voucher redemptions. While we have shown a noticeable increase since the launch of the new design, the decrease in shop frequency is an area for improvement, however, sales across the industry and economic struggles in the ANZ market have seen a reduction across all retailers. By prioritising customers' needs, while balancing business objectives and metrics, we have created a platform that drives customer loyalty and fosters a deeper connection between Kathmandu, the outdoors and its customers.