Portfolio: The “stop sell”

Context

A bank was updating a credit card product, stopping all applications for 60 days before the refresh. The marketing department wanted to put an “under construction sign” on the product page for that entire time.

What the marketing team suggested we use for inspiration.

I thought we could do better.

Constraints

Time frame: 1 week
Components: existing
New product information: none
Format: web

The challenge

The 60-day refresh period seemed like a wasted opportunity. Why let sales flatline for 17% of the calendar year when we could use that time to build interest around the new product.

At the same time, the product owners hadn’t actually finalized new details about the product refresh. They knew the credit card would be updated, but they were unable to tell us how or why. By extension, they couldn’t tell us why the customer should care about it.

Peak corporate finance, right?

We didn’t have much to work with:

No product details
No value proposition
No messaging points or themes
No new card art

That created a two-sided challenge:

Functional: The business would lose two months of sales.
Content: We couldn’t tell users anything about the product refresh.

The solution

Better function

I replaced the “under construction” concept with an email capture form right in the hero section. This enabled interested customers to receive a notification email automatically when the product launched.

Secondary intent

We included a link to view all credit cards if the user wanted or needed a card before this particular one would be refreshed.

Reframing poor marketing

I couldn’t solve the lack of product information, so I leaned into it. I reframed the lack of information to a soft “save the date” message to build intrigue.

Reassurance

I let existing card holders know that they didn’t need to do anything when the card relaunched. It’s intended to reassure them and to avoid creating micro-frustrations related to remembering the date.