iOS App Home Tab Evolution
2023 Black Friday - The iOS app made record breaking sales of $11 million
2025 Black Friday - Further enhancements delivered $18 million in sales
How did we do it? Let’s take a time machine back to 2022.
Role
Product Design lead
Date
2022 - 2025
Company Overview
American Eagle Outfitters is a global retailer with $5.34 billion annual revenue. The mobile app contributes to over 40% of total digital sales.
Business Problem:
While the mobile app’s home tab receives 90% of the traffic, its content is powered by outdated services that feature an obsolete UI that requires manual app releases to roll out updates.
Competitive Analysis
To inform the app strategy, I researched 23 different retail competitors and identified key approaches in their product content for both mobile web and iOS app experiences.
Approach #1:
61% of competitors have the same (mirrored) web and app content with the addition of mobile app-specific content.
Approach #2:
26% of competitors have unique web and mobile app content.
Approach #3:
13% of competitors have the same (mirrored) web and mobile app content.
I suggested that business and marketing teams adopt Approach #1. Combining mirrored and unique content ensures our mobile app users receive the most relevant information possible.
Experience Problem:
We conducted multiple rounds of user research with over 100 users. The focus of our research was on our customers’ mental model of our mobile app experience. Through this research, we learned that:
Content wasn't updated frequently enough for app users who makes 6.9 purchases per year compared to 2.3 for web users
Content felt irrelevant, lacked personalization and had low product engagement
Usability Test
With these learnings in mind, I made an “ideal” design that combined production mobile web product content with personalized content. I then conducted a usability test with 12 different users.
75% of users found it met or exceeded expectations
“It’s so intuitive…it’s funny because it has everything that I just said I wanted!”
— 35, female. Income: $20,000 - 39,999
Phased Testing and Execution:
For an effort of this magnitude, I worked with multiple product teams and stakeholders, including product managers and engineers, in order to scope out a phased approach to this project. Doing this allowed us to test our hypothesis and monitor user behaviour over time.
Phase 1: 2023
AB Test for New UI and CMS Integration
Objective: Introduce new UI, copy updates as well as migrate content and design to CMS.
Primary Metrics: Conversion rate, revenue, and engagement.
Results: +$2.3 million projected annual revenue lift.
Design:
Header and “offers” card UI updates
Move “offers” content to CMS to streamline cross platform execution
Add tap-to-apply feature for coded “offers”
Phase 2: 2023 - 2024
CMS “Master Module” Integration
Objective: Introduce CMS driven “master modules” (marketing templates) for promotional content.
Primary Metrics: Conversion rate, revenue, and engagement.
Results: By Phase 2, the marketing team can now use a single tool to execute flexible content across both the website and mobile app platforms.
Design:
Designed and introduced flexible templates for content through CMS.
Designed and introduced additional features such as the ability to add GIFs, videos, and countdown clocks.
Phase 3: 2024
Improve Search Presence and Experience
Objective: Elevate search to help users find products more efficiently and accurately.
Primary Metrics: Conversion rate, revenue, and engagement.
Result: +$5.64 million projected annual revenue lift
Design:
Redesigned search field to be more easily accessible.
Improved search experience so users can view results easily.
Phase 4: 2025
Loyalty and Personalisation
Objective: Introduce more personalization by elevating users’ loyalty statuses and product recommenders
Primary Metrics: Conversion rate, revenue, and engagement.
Loyalty AB Test Result: +0.32% conversion lift and +0.33% RPV lift
Recommenders AB Test: ongoing
Design:
Redesigned header to add loyalty statuses and welcome message.
Designed a product recommender experience powered by an enhanced personalization algorithm.
Consistency + Scalability:
While scaling our successes, I ensured the design remained flexible across different brands and regions:
Supported Multi-Brand Integration: Designed for the Aerie and Offline brands sharing the same app ecosystem.
Localised for Global Markets: Adapted use cases for the Canadian, Mexican, and International versions of the iOS app.
Cross-Platform Alignment: Developed feature parity for the Android app to ensure a consistent user experience.
What did I learn?
Be flexible. Projects that require multi-phased testing and funding can lead to learnings which may change the project’s direction.
Be patient. Each step should be tested and validated before moving on to the next. This cannot be done in one step.
What’s next?
Continue to test personalised recommenders. Even though users asked for product recommendations, this has not performed positively in AB tests. We have another test planned in 2026 to test other designs, placement and algorithms of the recommenders.