Badges and Signals in Cart
Driving buyer confidence with urgency & trust signals — $140M/year from cart and $185M/year from checkout.
eBay’s cart was missing critical information at the moment of purchase. I led a redesign that surfaced urgency signals and trust badges, helping buyers convert faster and more confidently. The success of this initiative led to similar updates in checkout, resulting in even greater impact.
Role: Lead Product Designer | Team: 6 (PM, Eng, UXR, Design)
BEFORE
AFTER
What Are Badges and Signals?
Badges are trust-building labels like Authenticity Guarantee, Certified Recycled, and Top Rated Plus - they highlight product quality, seller reputation, or buyer protection.
Signals are urgency or clarity cues like Price Drop, Last One, or Deal Ending - designed to guide decision-making at the moment of purchase.
These cues disappeared completely in cart - right when buyers needed them most.
The Opportunity
Despite over 225 million monthly cart sessions, eBay’s cart had a 90% abandonment rate — far above the industry average. While trust signals like “Free Shipping” or “Authenticity Guarantee” were shown earlier in the shopping journey, they disappeared from the cart — right when buyers were most ready to purchase.
Although users can check out directly from the View Item page, the cart remains one of the most critical decision-making moments in the buyer journey. Improving clarity and trust here presented one of the highest-leverage opportunities across the funnel.
The challenge: Provide confidence-boosting information without overwhelming users. The lack of visibility into shipping, seller credibility, and urgency led to hesitation and friction during decision-making.
My goal: Strike the right balance — integrating badges and signals subtly but effectively to guide users toward completing their purchase with confidence.
With foundational cart research already in place, we set out to better understand the specific causes of abandonment — and how trust-based UI patterns could address them.
Understanding Buyer Behavior in the Cart
At this point in the funnel, users had already shown intent — they’d added items to their cart. But abandonment remained high. To reduce friction and increase buyer confidence, I led efforts to investigate exactly why users were stalling in the cart.
In collaboration with our UX researcher, we dug into both behavioral data and direct buyer feedback to uncover what was missing from the cart experience.
What We Did
Surveyed 1,100+ eBay buyers about their cart behaviors and priorities
Analyzed heatmaps and session recordings of the cart page to identify pain points and drop-offs
Conducted user interviews and shop-along sessions to observe decision-making in real time
Ran a competitor audit (Amazon, Etsy, Walmart) to benchmark cart page best practices
Key Insights from the Cart
“The cart serves not just as a place to store items, but as a decision-making space where buyers evaluate whether to follow through.”
The research uncovered several patterns that revealed why users were abandoning their carts — and what information they needed to feel confident completing their purchase. These insights directly shaped our badge and signal strategy, helping us support users at a critical decision-making moment.
What we found
Key decision-making info was missing in the cart
Buyers often returned to the product page to re-check shipping costs, return policies, or seller reputation. These trust signals disappeared after add-to-cart — right when confidence was most important.
Urgency cues were effective — but had to feel real
Badges like “Last One” and “Offer Ending Soon” triggered action, especially for smaller carts. But when urgency was overused or felt generic, it backfired and led to skepticism.
Cart size influenced urgency
Shoppers with 1–2 items were quicker to act. Those with larger carts were more exploratory and less responsive to urgency — they needed trust and clarity instead of pressure.
Information inconsistency broke trust
When pricing details, seller info, or shipping badges didn’t carry over from the product page to the cart, users felt unsure. This lack of continuity introduced friction and increased abandonment.
Users weren’t abandoning because they lacked interest — they were hesitating because they didn’t trust what they saw in the cart. Urgency alone wasn’t enough. Buyers needed consistency, clarity, and the right signals at the right time.
Badge & Signal Strategy
Following our research, we created a focused badge system to reinforce trust, support buyer decision-making, and keep the cart clean. Our framework was guided by four simple but powerful principles.
Explorations & Collaboration
I started with quick, low-fidelity sketches to explore how trust signals, urgency cues, and price transparency could live in the cart experience. I focused on designing simply at first—grounded in research insights—before scaling ideas into more complex flows.
As patterns emerged, I partnered closely with product, research, and engineering to iterate on promising directions, validate feasibility, and align on experimentation goals. I also worked with accessibility specialists and mobile engineers to ensure badge designs met contrast standards and followed App Store guidelines across iOS and Android.
Team workshops, iterative design critiques, and accessibility reviews helped refine early ideas into testable concepts—balancing user needs, accessibility, and technical feasibility.
Testing & Validation
After refining early designs, we ran another round of shop-along studies to observe how buyers responded to updated trust and urgency cues in real time. These insights helped us prioritize which concepts to validate at scale.
We then partnered with product and analytics to run A/B and multivariate tests across mobile and desktop platforms in key markets including the US, UK, CA, and AU. Each variant was designed to increase buyer confidence and encourage checkout by surfacing the right context at the right time.
Variant Tested
Result
+6.2% cart-to-checkout (large carts)
Trust badges only
Urgency-only variant
+4.9% CTR on “Last One” (small carts)
Best performance across mobile platforms
Combo: Trust + Urgency
Shipping & return info surfaced early
-11% PDP revisit rate
Winning variants were launched using feature flags across Android, iOS, desktop, and mobile web—projected to drive a $30M annual iGMB uplift.
Implementation
After validation, I finalized responsive designs across iOS, Android, mobile web, and desktop. I built a detailed handoff file with a framework of implementation rules—covering spacing, typography, color, and component behavior—to keep dev aligned and velocity high.
I led a handoff walkthrough with engineering, flagged edge cases, and called out reusable patterns to streamline build. I stayed closely involved through QA, reviewing builds and helping fine-tune details to match the intended experience.
The designs were shipped globally across all platforms. After launch, we tracked adoption and performance closely and captured key learnings to bring into future cart improvements.
Results
Increased Buyer Confidence
Trust and urgency signals like “Last One” and “# Sold” helped buyers feel more confident in their decisions—especially at a high-friction moment like the cart. This led to fewer drop-offs and stronger intent to purchase.
Scalable Cross-Platform Delivery
Final designs were implemented across iOS, Android, mobile web, and desktop using a consistent, spec-driven framework that made engineering handoff smooth and repeatable.
Improved Cart-to-Checkout Flow
By streamlining the display of badges and value cues, we reduced hesitation and improved checkout efficiency—contributing to an overall $140M lift in incremental GMB on cart.
Systemized Design for Dev Velocity
I created a flexible set of implementation rules—spacing, typography, color, and badge hierarchy—that allowed engineers to ship quickly with fewer alignment gaps and minimal back-and-forth.
Lessons Learned
Design That Ships
I used to think a design was done when the UI looked great—this project taught me it’s not done until it’s built right. Creating a clear system for spacing, type, and component logic helped engineering move faster and reduced back-and-forth during QA. It made the final product tighter and the process smoother.
Small Signals, Big Impact
This project showed me how even small nudges—like trust badges or urgency tags—can change behavior at critical moments. Seeing these tiny details move the needle on conversion made me more intentional about timing, placement, and hierarchy in my designs. Subtle cues, used well, can drive real business results.
Systems Over Screens
Designing across iOS, Android, web, and mobile pushed me to create patterns that scaled. What started as a cart-specific layout became a modular framework that other teams could build on. This work laid the groundwork for future inclusion in eBay’s design system—especially for card components across platforms.
Conclusion & Next Steps
At eBay, I helped enhance the Cart and Checkout experience by introducing badges and signals that gave users the right information at the right time—boosting trust, urgency, and confidence in purchasing decisions.
This work contributed to meaningful business impact, including $140M iGMB in Nov 2023 and $178M iGMB in Jan 2024. But beyond the numbers, it showed how thoughtful UX and strong cross-functional collaboration can influence both user behavior and company goals.
If I were to continue evolving this work, I’d focus on:
Continuous Optimization
Monitoring feedback and analytics to refine signal logic and placement.
Expanding Signal Types
Exploring new trust indicators or personalized nudges based on user context.
Personalized Signal Logic
Tailoring badges to user behavior—like urgency for new buyers or trust cues for high-value items—to keep signals relevant without adding noise.
This project pushed me to think in systems, design for real impact, and become a sharper, more collaborative product designer.
After boosting buyer trust with smart cart signals, I turned to a deeper problem: price confusion.
My next project tackled one of eBay’s most common pain points—unclear discounts and hard-to-understand savings.
See how I redesigned Cart & Checkout for pricing clarity →