Standalone Marketplace

Designing a 0-1 product offering: a marketplace that operates outside the traditional rewards & recognition experience, targeting a net-new market segment with its own identity, wallet, and user experience.

problem

Every existing Awardco product requires a parent recognition or rewards program. The standalone marketplace removes that dependency; unlocking clients who want redemption infrastructure without the full R&R suite. Sitting within Awardco's multi-product portfolio strategy to maintain ongoing company growth, a standalone marketplace leverages an industry leading organizational component into a product that expands our total addressable markets.

solution

New personas, zero context. Prospect research has revealed that standalone marketplace buyers have different mental models and they think in "store credit" or "loyalty points," not "Awardco points." Affiliate revenue leverage. The marketplace already drives $560M+ in projected point redemptions annually. A standalone offering could accelerate affiliate capture rate from 5.70% to 5.97% -> a $1.5M in incremental revenue requiring no new inventory.

I am actively in prospect discovery research and am working within the product packet lifecycle to shape the UX brief and design direction for this zero-to-one product. This is early stage work is where design influence is at its highest, and the ability to shape the problem definition matters as much as any possible future interface.

Prospect research: Attended and contributed to discovery sessions (totaling 80+ hrs across 14 unique clients) surfacing mental models, language patterns, and purchase expectations from a potential standalone marketplace clients.
UX Brief contribution: Co-authored the UX Brief within the Product Packet, defining design questions around wallet architecture, funding flows, and the standalone entry experience.
Competitive landscape: Mapped the standalone gift card / incentive marketplace space — identifying trust signals, onboarding patterns, and catalog browsing conventions that inform design direction.
Wallet UX framing: Working with the architecture team to design the wallet as a first-class UX object and not a hidden system concept with clear balance display, transaction history, and funding mechanics for marketplace-only users.
Design system extension planning: Identifying which DS components need marketplace specific variants versus which can be reused & keeping scope tight for the limited access launch.