Rethinking the RetailMeNot Browser Extension
Led a retention and acquisition initiative that grew into a full redesign of the RetailMeNot browser extension — now in production with an 80% user preference for the new dockable FAB.
problem
My role
Our extension took up too much space and gave users too little control. How might we shrink the footprint without shrinking the value?
Product Design Lead
User research, competitive analysis, visual and interaction design, and testing, from discovery through launch.
overview
RetailMeNot's browser extension was losing ground on both retention and acquisition. I led a research-driven initiative to answer a single question — how might we rethink our design and footprint to not only retain users, but acquire more? — and what started as an optimization effort became a full design overhaul.
Baseline testing surfaced problems across branding, size, feature set, controls, and flow. The redesign that followed replaced our screen-hogging launch experience with a dockable FAB (floating action button) that hands control back to the user, and stakes out browser real estate no competitor was fighting for. Eighty percent of tested users preferred the new position.
background
The extension needed to work harder on two fronts at once: keeping the users we had and earning new ones. Before proposing solutions, I needed to know how people were actually using it.
I launched baseline user testing with current extension users — a short set of questions designed for a fast read on where the experience was succeeding and where it was creating friction. Because the mandate was broad, the research had to cast a wide net rather than probe one hypothesis.
The results came back broad too, and not in our favor. Users raised issues with our branding, our size, our overall feature set, our controls, and our flow — nearly every dimension of the product.
That scope of feedback made the conclusion unavoidable: this wasn't a tuning problem, it was an overhaul. After regrouping with the team and executive leadership, I framed three objectives to design against:
Reduce our visual footprint
Increase user control
Improve our brand presence
approach
Competitive analysis
I ran an extensive competitive analysis and found a pattern our extension was missing entirely: most direct competitors used a FAB that docks within the browser, serving as a persistent, low-cost reminder that deals are waiting. Critically, the FAB puts the user in charge — they launch the extension when they want deals and minimize it when they don't. That mapped directly onto our "increase user control" objective.
Designing the FAB
I explored a wide range of FAB directions across browser positioning, size, shape, color, and branding, running user testing alongside the design work to keep each round honest.
We landed on a simple rounded square in our more vibrant purple with a subtle glass effect. Testing showed users preferred it, and it did something strategically useful: it visually separated us from Rakuten, our closest competitor.
Questioning the upper-right corner
Positioning got its own round of testing, and this is where the project's central assumption came apart.
Every extension in this category fights for the upper right corner of the browser — the corner that sits directly on top of the user's cart. With the entire browser window available, we were all crowding into the one spot most likely to obstruct the moment of purchase. Why be a barrier when you can be seamlessly part of the experience?
I tested the FAB in several browser positions, informed by eye-tracking movement patterns. Eighty percent of users chose the bottom left. No more battling for the upper right.
solution
The redesign has two halves:
the FAB that lives in the browser, and the launch screen it opens.
the fab
A rounded square in vibrant RetailMeNot purple with a subtle glass treatment, docked bottom-left. It stays present without obstructing, distinguishes us visually from Rakuten, and makes launching and minimizing the extension a user decision rather than an interruption.
the launch screen
With position, design, and functionality settled, I turned to the "size" complaint at its source. The previous launch screen was packed with far too much information, so I reframed the problem as a question: what is the most important information the user needs at this moment in their journey?
That exercise in reduction produced several viable directions — stripped-down screens built around the single most valuable thing at that point in the shopping flow. Rather than pick one internally, we put them into live testing against each other.
outcomes
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outcomes *
80% of tested users preferred the bottom-left FAB position.
Validating a departure from a category-wide convention and clearing us out of the contested upper-right corner.
Testing confirmed the purple glass FAB direction, with users citing clearer differentiation from Rakuten.
A significantly reduced launch screen replaced an interface users consistently described as too large and too dense.
The work is live in production, with an A/B/C test running across the launch screen variants. The winner becomes the new face of the RetailMeNot browser extension.
Reflection
The most useful thing this project taught me is how rarely a shared convention gets re-examined.
Every competitor sat in the upper right corner, which made it read as settled, but nobody in the category seemed to have asked whether the corner covering the user's cart was a good place to stand. Competitive analysis is usually framed as finding out what everyone does so you can match it. Here it was more valuable as a way of finding out what everyone assumes so you can test it.
I also came away with more respect for broad, unfocused early research.
The baseline test wasn't elegant, a short set of questions, a wide net, no strong hypothesis. But the very breadth of the complaints that came back is what made the case for a full overhaul instead of another round of incremental fixes. Narrower research would have produced a narrower mandate.
Finally, the reduction work on the launch screen was the hardest part of the project and the least visible.
Cutting information is a series of small arguments about what matters, and the honest answer is that internal opinion could only get us so far, which is why the final call belongs to the A/B/C test rather than to me.