Overview
Clarifying Subscription vs. One-Time Pricing at Checkout
Role
Lead UI/UX Designer
Platform
eCommerce Web
Duration
1 month
Skills
UI & UX Design, Checkout Design, Conversion Optimization
Context
About this project
Chefgood is an Australian meal-kit and ready-meal subscription service. As Lead UI/UX Designer on the account, I owned the redesign of the checkout flow after a stakeholder flagged that customers were dropping off at checkout, with subscription pricing as a suspected cause.
Problem
The challenge we set out to solve
A stakeholder raised concerns that checkout drop-off was tied to unclear pricing; specifically, customers couldn't easily tell whether they were committing to a recurring subscription order or a one-time purchase.
How Might We
How might we make the choice between a one-time order and a recurring subscription unmistakably clear at the point of checkout, without adding friction to the purchase flow?
Final Delivery
What shipped
Diagnosing where the ambiguity lived
The first step was tracing the existing checkout flow to identify exactly where subscription and one-time pricing logic intersected and where that distinction became unclear to the user.
Designing an explicit frequency selection step
I designed an explicit order-frequency selector directly within the checkout flow: letting users actively choose between a one-time order and a recurring delivery schedule.
Making the price difference visible at the decision point
The frequency selector was positioned so the price implications of each choice were visible at the moment of decision.
Reflection
What I learned
The biggest takeaway from this project is that reduced checkout drop-off followed directly from making an implicit choice explicit.
The biggest takeaway from this project is that reduced checkout drop-off followed directly from making an implicit choice explicit.
The fix wasn't a prettier checkout page: it was decision architecture, surfacing the one-time vs. subscription choice at the exact moment the user needed it.
Impact
Reduced checkout drop-off
This is the headline result of the redesign: once the one-time vs. weekly delivery choice was made visible and explicit instead of implied or buried in the flow, noticeably fewer customers abandoned checkout.
Resolved the core ambiguity
Customers could see, at the moment of decision, whether they were purchasing a one-time order or a recurring subscription — and at what price each option cost — removing the confusion the stakeholder had originally flagged.