Gift Card Exchange — Platform Redesign
Role
Senior Product Designer
Company
Gift Card Exchange
Platform
Web & Mobile
Date
March 2022
OVERVIEW
Rebuilding before launch
Gift Card Exchange (GCX) is an Australian e-commerce platform for buying, selling, and exchanging gift cards from 100+ major brands. When I joined, the business was preparing to go to market on an old PrestaShop build — but that site had never actually launched. It was outdated, difficult to navigate, not mobile-friendly, and constrained by template limitations that couldn’t support the product GCX needed to compete.
THE CHALLENGE
About to launch on a PrestaShop template that wasn’t ready
GCX was built on PrestaShop, but the existing template had never gone live — outdated, not mobile-friendly, and unable to support Exchange, wallet, or loyalty flows. The platform stayed; the template couldn’t launch as-is.
WHAT I DID
What I owned
End-to-end design: research, IA, UX/UI, user testing, and a Figma design system — designing for implementation as a custom PrestaShop theme, on a fixed pre-launch timeline.
What I delivered
Full PrestaShop template redesign (custom theme)
Exchange & Regift system
GCX+ loyalty program
Purchase, checkout, wallet, and account flows
Figma design system and PrestaShop dev handoff
IMPACT
Results within 12 months of launch
$6M
Annual gift card sales within 12 months of launch (from ~$300K/month)
+80%
Year-on-year growth in gift cards purchased
+28%
Increase in average order value
35%
Improvement in browse-to-purchase conversion
90K+
Total clients served · 40K+ monthly active users
KEY INSIGHT
GCX gift cards aren’t activated at purchase — unlike every competitor. That became the foundation for Exchange and Regift. The default PrestaShop template couldn’t express it; a fully redesigned custom theme could.
HOW
Process in brief
Audited unreleased PrestaShop template + competitor analysis (Prezzy, Cardly, etc.)
Mapped journeys and IA with no live analytics to lean on
Ran pre-launch usability testing with 4 participants — fixed credits checkout, post-activation CTAs, and login friction before ship
Prioritised launch scope using Now / Later / Park with product and engineering on PrestaShop
TAKEAWAY
You don’t have to leave the platform to transform the experience
GCX stayed on PrestaShop — but launching the old template would have capped growth from day one. A full redesign implemented as a custom theme shipped Exchange, loyalty, and wallet features without the cost and risk of a platform migration.