Driveway Checkout & Omnichannel Buying Strategy

As Product Design Manager, I led an 8-person pod to deliver customer-back improvements that unified Driveway’s online, remote concierge, and showroom checkout experiences.

Role

Product Design Manager

Team

Product · Engineering · Research · CX Ops

Timeline

14 months

Scope

4 initiatives · 3 channels

Impact

Customer-back framing delivered measurable shifts in trust, completion, and velocity

We anchored the program in buyer friction—“Can I finish this from my couch?”, “Do I lose progress across channels?”, “Who owns my deal?”—and only shipped work that removed those pains.

48%

Checkout completion

Up from 34%

81%

Financing confidence

Up from 52%

-47%

Support contacts

3.2 → 1.7

-34%

Restart rate

46% → 12%

19 mins

Time saved

Concierge deals

26%

Increase in remote pathway usage

Concierge adoption

By designing the backbone—shared state, concierge context, transparent financing, modular pathways—buyers experienced continuity even as they switched channels.

The Challenge

“I lose my progress. I don’t trust the pricing. I need a human—now.”

Shoppers toggled between web, concierge, and showroom; pricing shifted late; agents lacked context; and no one saw a unified journey.

Progress resets across channels

Systems didn’t share state, forcing buyers to restart or re-enter info.

Financial mistrust

Pricing and terms surfaced too late, causing surprise and abandonment.

Disjointed handoffs

Concierge and showroom teams couldn’t see buyer context.

Feature-first roadmap

Changes were framed as features instead of customer outcomes.

Initiatives

Four connected launches that turned friction into confidence

1. Unified Journey Timeline

A shared timeline exposed journey status across all touchpoints.

  • Single source of truth
  • Milestones for financing, trade-in, docs
  • Agents join with full context
  • 38% reduction in “Where is my deal?” contacts

2. Modal Checkout Pathways

Mode-aware checkout preserved progress across channels.

  • Online · Remote · Showroom modes
  • Real-time channel switching
  • Clear channel expectations
  • 26% lift in remote completions

3. Transparent Financing & Trade-Ins

Scenario planning and previews surfaced real costs early.

  • Side-by-side scenarios
  • Live trade-in appraisal visibility
  • Early contract preview
  • 41% increase in financing selections

4. Concierge-Ready Playbooks

Scripts, documents, and next actions surfaced automatically.

  • Routing tied to journey stage
  • Context-driven scripts
  • One-click paperwork access
  • 19 min faster assisted checkout

Approach

Designed from customer-back insights, built for omnichannel scale

1. Customer-back roadmap

OKRs focused on reducing friction—not shipping features.

2. Service blueprinting

  • Mapped touchpoints & ownership
  • Defined system-of-record per milestone
  • Aligned frontstage/backstage dependencies

3. Omnichannel design system extensions

Added primitives for timelines, channel badges, and compliance-safe components.

4. Research ops

  • Weekly intercepts
  • Monthly diary studies
  • Quarterly service tours

5. Rallying rituals

Voice of the Driver sessions aligned teams around real buyer stories.

Key Decisions

Critical pivots that kept the roadmap customer-first

Shared state before UI polish

Unified state service reduced restarts by 34 points.

Expose financing early

Upfront transparency increased financing selections by 41%.

Design human touchpoints

Playbooks reduced assisted checkout time by 19 minutes.

Require customer evidence for pivots

Countless scope requests deflected; customer outcomes stayed central.

Skills Demonstrated

Design leadership across teams and systems

Customer-back leadership

Roadmap aligned to real friction instead of internal requests.

Systems thinking

Channel parity came from foundational API investment.

Omnichannel governance

Standards kept experiences consistent across channels.

Research operations

Recurring research kept signals flowing.

Stakeholder orchestration

Cross-functional alignment through an Omnichannel Council.

Change management

Playbooks and rituals supported team adoption.

Key Learnings

What Driveway taught me about omnichannel excellence

Customer framing beats feature framing

Friction-first framing kept everyone aligned.

Backbone investment pays dividends

Shared state unlocked huge long-term gains.

Transparency builds trust

Early pricing visibility reversed confidence issues.

Humans need good design too

Agents became dramatically more effective with context.