Why?

A competitive edge is necessary to offset the competition in the evergrowing market of POS systems.

How?


  • An app that acts as aggretator of all lightspeed clients.

  • Adds a much needed reservation booking option

  • Emphasizes the loyalty and rewards system

  • Provides an indirect push to switch to Lightspeed POS by influencing the consumer's shopping & dining decisions.

The Fragmentation Tax: The Story of the
Modern Shopper

The modern consumer's digital life is a study in fragmentation. Consider John, a 27-year-old resident of Montreal who is tech-savvy and enjoys dining out, particularly when he can find a good deal. His experience, however, is far from seamless. His smartphone is a graveyard of single-purpose loyalty apps, his email inbox is a chaotic stream of promotional newsletters, and his reward points are scattered across a dozen disconnected merchant accounts.

John's journey on a typical evening out highlights the friction inherent in this system. He plans to meet friends for drinks, an exciting prospect that quickly sours. His first step is to search his inbox for ongoing promotions, a tedious task that yields no clear winner. He then turns to the web to search for "best bars in his area," cross-referencing lists with his fragmented knowledge of his loyalty statuses. After discovering a promising option, he is unable to book online and must resort to calling the establishment to reserve a table. Upon arrival and payment, he finds he doesn't have enough points to redeem a reward. The final blow comes later, when he realizes another venue offered a better promotion where his points would have been sufficient for a free drink. His evening ends not with satisfaction, but with the frustrating sense of a missed opportunity.

This experience is not a minor inconvenience; it is a "fragmentation tax”, a significant cognitive and emotional cost paid by consumers due to a disconnected retail landscape. The core problem is clear: the relationship between consumers and local merchants is fundamentally broken, lacking a single, intelligent interface to manage discovery, transactions, and loyalty.

The Hidden Cost of Fragmentation:

  • Consumers manage an average of 14.8 loyalty memberships but actively use only 6.7

  • $100 billion in unredeemed loyalty points sit dormant annually

  • 73% spend over 15 minutes deciding where to spend money, paralyzed by choice


But the real insight emerged from behavioural research: John doesn't want more loyalty programs. He wants to feel like an insider, someone who knows where the best deals are, who gets exclusive access, who makes smart financial decisions effortlessly

Bio

John is a 27 year old resident of Montreal. He loves to shop and dine out but as a smart shopper, he uses coupons and looks for the best deals available when he is shopping or dining. He is not loyal to any specific brand, he prefers shopping at places which has the best deals and promos.

Pain Points

  • Browse multiple accounts to check how much point he has collected at each store.

  • No app to check all his loyalty points at one place.

  • Loses out on good deals as he can't track offers without downloading the app or subscribing to newsletters.

  • Hates calling up restaurants and bars to book a reservation.

Goals

An app which shows him the best deals at the stores he shops at.

  • Which also shows all his loyalty points from all the stores he shops at.

  • An app that notifies him when there is an offer at his favourite store.

  • An option to check out restaurants in his area and make reservations

From Problem to Principle: Asking the
Right Questions

To address such a systemic problem, the design process must be guided by questions that challenge foundational assumptions. The project was framed not around building another loyalty app, but around three strategic inquiries, or "How Might We" (HMW) statements:

HMW consolidate the chaos of multiple loyalty programs into a single, proactive experience that makes users like John feel like savvy insiders?
HMW provide immediate, tangible value to the very first user, even before a single merchant has joined the platform?
HMW create a symbiotic ecosystem where local merchants feel empowered and customers feel rewarded?

These questions elevate the project's ambition. The first HMW focuses on the emotional outcome for the user, feeling smart and in control, not just accumulating points. The second confronts the classic "chicken-and-egg" dilemma of any two-sided marketplace, forcing an innovative solution to the cold-start problem. The third HMW defines the project's ultimate goal: to build not just a product, but a sustainable, mutually beneficial ecosystem.

The Ecosystem Strategy: Creating Value
Before Capture

The greatest challenge for any new platform is generating initial value. A platform with no users is useless to merchants, and a platform with no merchants is useless to users. The second HMW statement forces a direct confrontation with this paradox.

The solution was to build Engage upon the foundation of an existing Point-of-Sale (POS) system network. This strategic decision is the key to unlocking immediate value. When a user like John downloads Engage for the first time, he isn't starting from zero. By connecting to the POS network, the app can potentially surface his existing loyalty points and transaction history from merchants he already frequents. This provides instant, personalized value, demonstrating the app's power from the very first session and creating a powerful incentive for adoption.

This approach also seeds the symbiotic flywheel envisioned in the third HMW. Engage is architected as a B2B2C platform, providing immense value to merchants. By offering them a suite of tools, including reservation management, payment processing, and detailed customer analytics, Engage becomes an indispensable partner in their success. This empowerment creates a virtuous cycle: merchants equipped with better tools can offer more compelling rewards and a smoother customer experience. This, in turn, attracts more users like John, whose engagement and spending data further enrich the platform's value for all participating merchants.

User Research: Beyond the Obvious

The research phase revealed three critical psychological insights that would shape the entire experience:

  1. The Insider Effect: Users didn't want more points, they wanted to feel smart about their purchasing decisions. The most engaged users were those who discovered value others missed, not those who accumulated the most rewards.

  2. The Convenience Paradox: More choices led to decision paralysis. Users preferred curated, contextual recommendations over comprehensive listings. The key was progressive disclosure, showing just enough to make a decision, with deeper detail available on demand.

  3. The Social Validation Loop: Users shared deal discoveries 3x more than reward redemptions. The social currency wasn't the savings, it was the discovery process itself.

Designing for Cohesion: A Walkthrough of
the Engage Experience

Every design decision within Engage is a direct response to John's pain points and the guiding HMWs, creating a cohesive and intuitive user journey. The platform's core functions, Discovery, Rewards, and Reservations are integrated into a single, fluid experience. The ability to browse restaurants, view menus, and book a table directly within the app eliminates the friction John experienced when he had to call for a reservation. This design captures the user from the moment of intent to the point of action, keeping them within the ecosystem.
The Rewards dashboard is the psychological core of the experience. A prominent display stating, "You have Saved $521 this year," is a powerful design element that does more than convey information. By quantifying rewards in tangible, monetary terms, it makes the value proposition emotionally resonant. This leverages the Endowment Effect, a principle of behavioural psychology suggesting that people ascribe more value to things they own. John feels a sense of ownership over his savings, motivating him to continue using the app to protect and grow this "investment." This feature directly addresses the first HMW by transforming the mundane act of point collection into a gratifying game of smart shopping, making John feel like a "savvy insider."
Furthermore, the app is designed to be a proactive assistant, not a passive database. Features like proximity-based deal sorting and push notifications for offers at favourite stores solve John's problem of missing out on opportunities. This proactive intelligence ensures that value is constantly being delivered to the user, reinforcing engagement and building long-term loyalty to the platform itself.

Empowering the Merchant: The Other Side of
the Flywheel

A thriving ecosystem requires that both sides of the market feel empowered. For local merchants, Engage offers a suite of tools that were previously the exclusive domain of large corporations.

  1. Customer Intelligence Dashboard: Merchants receive anonymized analytics about customer behaviour patterns, popular items by time/day, and competitive positioning within their category. This transforms the relationship from transactional to strategic.

  2. Dynamic Pricing Tools: Real-time demand management allows merchants to optimize for different business objectives, clearing inventory during slow periods, attracting new customers, or rewarding high-value regulars.

  3. Marketing Automation: Automated promotional campaigns based on customer behaviour, with built-in A/B testing and performance tracking. Small businesses gain enterprise-level marketing capabilities without the complexity.


    The platform provides small business owners with access to enterprise-level analytics, including real-time sales dashboards, customer behaviour analysis, and inventory tracking. This "data as a service" model enables them to make informed, data-driven decisions to optimize their operations and marketing efforts. Integrated reservation and payment management systems streamline their workflow, reducing administrative overhead and freeing up time to focus on what they do best: serving their customers.

Measuring What Matters: The Economics of
a Healthy Ecosystem

To measure the success of a multi-sided platform, the primary metric must reflect the health of the entire system. Therefore, the North Star Metric for Engage is Total Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) processed through participating merchants.

This metric was chosen because it is a direct indicator of the ecosystem's vitality. GMV can only grow if both sides of the market are thriving: consumers must be actively engaged and spending, and merchants must be successfully attracting business and processing transactions through the platform. It is the ultimate measure of the symbiotic flywheel's momentum.

This North Star is supported by a constellation of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that act as diagnostic tools. These include:

  • Number of active merchants: Measures the health of the supply side.

  • Number of monthly active users: Measures the health of the demand side.

  • Average reservation conversion rate: Indicates the effectiveness of the discovery-to-action funnel.

  • Points redemption rate: A key indicator of user engagement with the loyalty program.

  • Customer retention rate for participating merchants: Proves the platform's value in building lasting customer relationships. Together, these metrics provide a comprehensive, real-time view of the ecosystem's health, ensuring that growth is sustainable and balanced.

Behavioral Psychology Integration

The design leveraged three key psychological principles:

  1. The Zeigarnik Effect: Incomplete loyalty progress was prominently displayed, creating cognitive tension that motivated completion. Users saw not just current points, but how close they were to meaningful rewards.

  2. Social Proof Amplification: Popular deals were highlighted with real-time popularity indicators: "47 people redeemed this offer today." This created urgency and validation simultaneously.

  3. Choice Architecture: Decision complexity was reduced through smart defaults and progressive disclosure. Users could act quickly on simple decisions or dive deeper when needed.

The User Experience Journey

John's Transformed Experience:
  • Morning Context: Walking to work, John receives a notification: "Your usual coffee shop has a 15% off deal ending in 2 hours."
  • Lunch Discovery: The app suggests a new restaurant offering a first-time visitor discount, based on his preference for Italian cuisine and budget range.
  • Evening Planning: Instead of scrolling through multiple apps, John sees his combined loyalty status across all nearby dinner options, with real-time availability and current promotions.
  • Social Sharing: After discovering a great deal, John shares it with his network, earning bonus points and helping friends while strengthening his identity as a savvy urban insider.

Success Metrics and Business Model

North Star Metric: Total Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) processed through participating merchants

Key Performance Indicators:

  • Monthly Active Users (MAU) of the loyalty platform

  • Average transaction value increase for participating merchants

  • Customer acquisition cost reduction for (xyz) POS sales

  • Revenue per merchant from loyalty program features

Business Model:

  • SaaS subscription tier for advanced merchant features ($29-99/month)

  • Transaction fee percentage (0.5-1% of GMV)

  • Premium customer features (advanced analytics, priority support) ($4.99/month)

  • Data insights licensing to enterprise clients

Go-to-Market Strategy:

  • Pilot with 50 high-performing (xyz) merchants in Montreal

  • Geographic expansion following transit route patterns

  • Partnership with local business associations

  • Referral incentives for both merchants and consumers