FEVO
FEVO is helping the world’s biggest brands reimagine online shopping by making every e-commerce site a social, interactive destination.
- Role
- Consultant, Director of Product Design
- Product
- Site Add-on, E-commerce
- Location
- Boston, MA (Remote)
The Story
I joined FEVO as a consultant designer to design Shop with Friends, a new feature delivered as an embedded JavaScript widget that partners add to their own event and product pages. It turns buying tickets into a group decision: an organizer invites friends into a private chat to agree on dates, ticket prices, seating and travel before anyone buys.
I worked closely with the Director of Product and a second designer, in a company of more than 30 people. Shop with Friends had two sides. The other designer owned retail, where a shopper on a site like Macy's invites friends to weigh in on clothes with a quick, Tinder-style swipe poll. I owned live events, FEVO's main business, and designed that version end to end, from the entry point on a partner's page through polls, sign-up and the group chat.
At a glance. The bet was that friends sell tickets better than ads. I designed an MVP that gets the whole group into the purchase and tracks everyone's answers in one place. Testing moved polls ahead of sign-up and picked the entry point, and partner feedback turned the winning button into a tab. It was never released for live music.
Role
Consultant Product Designer
Team
Director of Product, and a second designer who owned the retail version; a company of 30+
Platforms
Embedded JavaScript widget, Mobile Web
Responsibilities
Product Design, User Experience, Usability Testing, Information Architecture
Description
FEVO is helping the world’s biggest brands reimagine online shopping by making every e-commerce site a social, interactive destination.
About FEVO
FEVO helps brands turn online shopping into something people do together. Its widget sits on a partner's own site, so shoppers can bring friends into a purchase without leaving the page they're on. Shop with Friends started on the retail side, where it drew interest from Athleta, Peter Thomas Roth, Michael Kors and Tiffany & Co. This project brought it to live music, where buying together is the norm.
The bet
Shop with Friends was a bet on socializing the purchase. People already ask friends for feedback before they buy, and a friend's recommendation carries trust a brand can't buy. Our market research kept pointing at the same behavior: shoppers reach out to friends, and those recommendations push them to purchase. Live events take it further, because most people don't go alone. Eventbrite's attendee survey found most people go to live events with one or two others (57%), and fewer than a quarter usually go alone.
Industry research, not FEVO data. 89%: Nielsen Trust in Advertising, 2021, where recommendations from people they know were the most trusted channel. 63%: Bizrate Insights, The State of Social Shopping, July 2024, US social media users (1,014) who often buy after friends or family recommend, comment on or share a product. Event attendance: Eventbrite's 2022 survey recap, January 2023.
| Period | Share of consumers | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Trust people they know | 89% | |
| Buy after friends engage | 63% |
What success would have looked like. For partners, the promise was bigger orders and more buyers per visit: one organizer brings a group, not a single ticket. Since the MVP never launched, these are the measures we planned to track, not results:
- Invite rate: how many organizers send the share link.
- Join rate: how many invited friends answer a poll to join.
- Group conversion: how many groups go on to buy tickets.
- Order size: tickets per order and buyers per organizer, compared with solo purchases.
How groups plan today
Before designing anything, we looked at how friends plan a show today: in the group text they already have. Everything happens in one stream of messages, so the plan only exists in people's heads. Each number marks a place where it breaks down.
Breakaway 2024 🎶
6 people
- Lisa: Breakaway lineup just dropped!! Who's in? 🎉
- DanI'm in
- Mayamaybe 👀
- Read by 4 of 6
- ChrisSaturday or both days?
- Lisa: Saturday! Sunday could work too
- Danwait are we doing GA or VIP?
- MayaVIP is $199, that's too much for me
- 38 new messages about something else
- Chrisok so who's actually going and which day lol
- Chrisalso I already grabbed GA for Sunday 😬
- Lisa: I'll buy the rest tonight. Venmo me $99 each
- Dancan someone drive? not booking a hotel for one night
- Who's going?"I'm in", "maybe" and silence all look the same. Read receipts show who saw the message, not who's coming, so nobody knows how many tickets to buy.
- Which day and time?Saturday, Sunday or both gets asked, half answered and asked again. The thread never shows one agreed date.
- Which ticket tier, at what price?GA or VIP splits the group by budget. There's no way to vote, so the question stalls or the loudest answer wins.
- Decisions get buriedAnswers scroll away under memes and side conversations. People who join late re-ask questions that were already settled, or never were.
- Someone buys on their ownWithout an agreed plan, a friend buys the wrong day or tier, and the group's tickets no longer match.
- One person fronts the moneyThe organizer pays for everyone, then chases payments in another app and tracks who still owes them.
- Travel is another threadRides, hotels and meetup times spill into more chats, so the plan is spread across apps and people's memories.
The MVP went after the first four: getting all the friends into the purchase and tracking their answers. Polls ask who's going, which day and which tier, answers show who picked what, and the whole group sees what it agreed on in one place, so planning stays engaging and focused. Mismatched purchases, splitting the cost and travel were real problems too, but we left them out of the MVP to keep it focused.
The problem
The brief. Going to a festival is a group decision, but tickets are bought one person at a time. Group organizers had no fun or simple way to pull friends into one place to agree on a date, a price and a seating tier before buying.
What we found. I worked with the cross-functional team to map the organizer's pain points, and with stakeholders to align on how Shop with Friends should fit into FEVO's core live music service. Usability tests on the entry points, wireframes and high-fidelity mocks kept pointing at the same risk: every extra step before the fun part was a reason to leave. Industry research says the same about checkout.
70%of online shopping carts are abandoned, on average
Industry benchmark, not FEVO data. Baymard Institute cart abandonment research, updated September 2025: the 70.22% average comes from 50 studies, and the reasons come from Baymard's survey of US online shoppers. It's the research behind keeping login and onboarding out of the MVP.
| Period | Share of US online shoppers who gave this reason | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Too long or complicated | 17% | |
| Had to create an account | 18% |
The decision. The MVP had no login and no onboarding. Organizers give a name and an email, agree to the terms, and they're in. To make setup quick, I designed polls with recommended questions for the event, such as whether people are going and which days work, while still letting organizers write their own. Inviting friends takes one share link.
Designing the flow
How the flow changed
The biggest change between the two design phases was the order. In Phase 1, organizers agreed to the terms and gave their details before doing anything else. In Phase 2, they pick the questions to ask first, so the first thing they do is plan the trip, and the sign-up comes once they've already invested in it.
Phase 1
Sign-up came first, before the organizer had done anything worth keeping.
- 1Lands on the event page
- 2Taps Plan with Friends
- 3Enters name and contact, accepts the terms
- 4Sets up poll questions
- 5Invites friends
- 6Friends answer to join
- 7The group chats and compares answers
Phase 2
Planning comes first, so sign-up is a short step to save something the organizer already made.
- 1Lands on the event page
- 2Opens the group chat
- 3Picks the questions to askRecommended for the event, or written from scratch
- 4Enters name and contact, accepts the terms
- 5Invites friends
- 6Friends answer to join
- 7The group chats and compares answers
Why we flipped it. With sign-up first, testers didn't understand what they were logging into: their account on the partner's site, a FEVO account, or something new. In a cognitive walkthrough with polls first, testers could explain why they were giving a name and email, and what Shop with Friends was for. Seeing the polls is what made the sign-up make sense.
Five rounds of design
The experience went through three rounds of wireframes and two rounds of high-fidelity design, and was renamed twice along the way. Pick a round to see what changed, and switch between its screens.
Plan with Friends: sign up, then build a poll
The first version put sign-up first. A Plan with Friends button on the event page opened a form for a name, contact and the terms, then a chat room where the organizer invited friends and built questions from scratch.
- Name, contact and terms before anything else
- Polls built from scratch in a sheet with single, multiple and open answers
- Participants answer I'm going, maybe or not going above the chat
- Name
- Plan with Friends
- Order
- Sign up, then questions
The final design
Tap through the final design, from the ticket page to the group's poll results.
Ticket page. Shop with Friends lives in the partner's ticket widget as a Group Chat tab, right beside Buy and About, so planning starts where people are already deciding.
Tap the highlighted spots on the screen to move through the flow.
The full experience
The full workflow maps both sides of Shop with Friends on FEVO's core product, from the partner's event page to the group chat.
Select the board to open it at full size.
Group organizer. It starts with the organizer choosing questions for the group, then inviting friends to answer and join the conversation.
View Figma PrototypeParticipants. Friends accept the invite and answer the organizer's questions to join the party chat.
View Figma PrototypeWhat we tested
I ran usability tests on Ballpark for the three riskiest parts of the flow: where people enter Shop with Friends, when they sign up, and how they answer polls. I drafted the options with the design team and worked with the Ballpark team to spot pitfalls, so testers could finish smoothly and the results would be reliable.
Sign-up order. Covered in Designing the flow: with polls first, testers could explain what they were signing up for and why.
Polls. We tested how organizers set up questions and how friends answer them. The blank poll builder from the first wireframes gave way to recommended questions for the event, and answering moved to a full-screen view with each friend's avatar on their pick.
Entry point. The widget only works if people notice it on a partner's page. This test compared four ways into Shop with Friends on the event page and the checkout overlay: a floating action button (FAB), a button, a banner and a tab.
The result. The FAB was the most visible, but a tester took it for a support chat and ignored it. A button paired with a larger container worked best. Placed near Get Tickets Now, its supporting text explained what it was for, so testers understood it and used it.
Option 1: FAB. The most visible, but mistaken for a support chat.
Option 2: Button. The winner. Next to Get Tickets Now, with a container and supporting text that explain it.
Option 3: Banner. A banner announcing the feature on the page.
Option 4: Tab. A tab that opens the feature from the page. Less visible in testing, but it's what we shipped in the final design.
Why we chose the tab anyway
The button tested best, but partners embedding the widget didn't want a second button on their page competing with their own buy button. FEVO also ran dedicated event pages it controlled, where we could have added the button. For consistency, we chose one pattern that worked in both places: a Group Chat tab inside the ticket widget, beside Buy and About.
It traded some visibility for partner adoption. A feature partners won't put on their page reaches no one, and inside the widget, the tab sits where people are already choosing tickets. If it had launched, the tab's open rate is the first number I'd have checked against the button.
Design Process
Championed by our design leader, the team worked in the open, focused on making experiences fun, simple and engaging. We held weekly design critiques and company-wide design updates to share progress and gather feedback.
Outcomes
- Designed the live music MVP end to end, from the entry point on a partner's page to the group chat, across three wireframe rounds and two high-fidelity rounds.
- Moved poll setup ahead of sign-up after testers couldn't tell what they were logging into. With polls first, they could explain why they were signing up and what the feature was for.
- Kept login and onboarding out of the MVP, removing account creation, which 18% of US shoppers name as a reason they abandon checkout (Baymard Institute).
- Usability testing picked the entry point, then I traded the winning button for a tab that partners would accept and that worked on FEVO's own event pages too.
- Delivered the final screens with a full set of components for engineering.
In Retrospect
The project was both intriguing and disruptive, and I had the opportunity to work with amazing designers to craft an MVP for the live music event space. Although it was never released, it was seen as valuable, especially since Shop with Friends showed potential on the retail e-commerce side, attracting interest from Athleta, Peter Thomas Roth, Michael Kors and Tiffany & Co.
What I'd do differently.
- Bring partners in earlier. The tab decision came from partner pushback after the button had already won. Testing within partners' constraints from the start would have saved a round.
- Test with real groups. Shop with Friends depends on invited friends joining, and testing one person at a time can't show that. A small pilot with real friend groups would have tested the join rate directly.
- Plan the next problem. Splitting the cost is where the organizer's pain is sharpest once the group agrees, and it's the natural next release.
