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Fair access to high-demand product drops.
Zalando · 2024Making high-demand drops fairer.
I designed the core product experience for Invite Only, a solution introduced to decrease bot activity and give genuine customers a secure, transparent path to sought-after products across Europe.
- Timeline
- 8 months
- Role
- Senior Product Designer
- Market
- Europe · 25 countries
- Team
- Product, engineering, content + operations
Goals
Create a seamless purchase experience for genuine customers.
The work centred on three outcomes: level the playing field by reducing bot interference, make the invitation lifecycle easy to understand, and sustain the excitement of limited-edition releases without creating unnecessary pressure.
Prioritise fairness
Give genuine customers a fair chance while minimising bot interference.
Simplify purchase
Make each invitation state and next action clear from entry to confirmation.
Build engagement
Preserve anticipation while reducing the stress of release-time checkout.
Approach
Simplifying and securing the process.
Previously, customers tracked release times manually and raced through a standard checkout that bots could overwhelm. Invite Only starts from the release calendar: customers register interest, eligibility is evaluated using trust signals, and successful orders are confirmed asynchronously.
Communication
Purposeful, precise and proactive.
Dynamic modules on the product page provide stock updates, drop dates, invite validity, quick access to FAQs and personalised guidance. Usability testing and desk research helped the team answer likely questions before they became points of friction.
Results
Six million customer requests in the first month.
The resulting experience improved customers’ perception of a secure and seamless purchase process. Customers could enter a sale faster, with less rush and a fairer chance to participate.