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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

Desktop checkout screen
1

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.

2

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.

Designing an explicit frequency selection step 1
3

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.

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.

Impact

Key Result

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.