Held for you
A checkout concept for Zara where a piece you choose stays yours for five minutes, and urgency only shows up when it’s real.
The problem in one line
A piece becomes unavailable between selecting it and paying for it.
- Project
- Zara checkout, concept project (no affiliation with Zara)
- Role
- UX/UI designer: research, prototyping, interaction design
- Method
- I interviewed two shoppers about their frustrations buying on Zara
- Tools
- Figma, Claude (research support and writing)
- Duration
- 1 week, part-time
Two frustrations worth solving
Removing a piece from the basket
“The payment wouldn’t go through, and some items turned out to be unavailable, even though they still showed as available. I had to delete them myself so I gave up.”Mariana, shopper
Waiting for an order that never arrives
“I bought a piece on sale with only a few sizes left, then waited for the delivery. After a few days there was still no update on my order, so I checked and saw the piece had gone back to the store. I had to call Zara, and customer service told me it was no longer available and that they would refund me.”Evie, shopper
With two interviews, these are signals rather than statistics.
Screens are recreated for this project.
The piece that disappears
Different moments, same root problem: a piece isn’t really yours until it arrives, and nothing protects it along the way. Before checkout, a piece can sell out while it’s in the basket, and the customer only finds out at payment. After payment, the order is confirmed, but the piece was never actually available.
I focused on the first with a five-minute hold (04 · The idea), and added a clearer refund message for the second (08 · Before and after). Ideally, Zara’s system would also detect that the piece can’t be delivered, refund the order and notify the customer right away, so they never have to contact support. That depends on the system behind the screens, so it’s a next step (09 · Next steps).
A hold, not a rush
How might we protect a piece while the customer decides, without adding pressure?
When a piece is almost sold out, it is held for the customer for five minutes after it’s added to the basket. Urgency appears only when it’s real. Try it.
The hold starts as soon as the piece is in the basket. Only the hold reserves a piece. A piece sitting in a basket is not reserved. Secure this piece takes the customer to payment. If the time ends first, the piece goes back on sale and the customer can keep shopping.
When the timer appears. It appears only when a shopper adds a piece that is almost sold out, because that shopper is buying now. A basket left waiting never gets a timer. If its piece sells out, the basket says so when it’s opened.
Added to your basket
This piece is almost sold out.
Pay to secure it. Anything you order in the next 24 hours shares the same delivery fee.
Taking you to payment…
Your hold has ended.
This piece is back on sale.
What I chose, and what I gave up
Real urgency over persuasive urgency
- Chose
- The countdown only appears when a piece is actually held.
- Gave up
- Extra conversions from constant “low stock” messaging.
- Why
- Pressure that isn’t real erodes trust.
A 5-minute hold
- Chose
- A short hold, long enough to pay.
- Gave up
- A longer, more relaxed window.
- Why
- Longer holds block pieces for other shoppers.
Two actions, no Checkout button
- Chose
- “Secure this piece” and “Continue shopping”.
- Gave up
- A familiar shortcut.
- Why
- Fewer choices make the next step clearer.
24-hour shared delivery fee
- Chose
- One fee for all orders within 24 hours of the first payment.
- Gave up
- Tighter cost control for the store.
- Why
- Simple, generous, and it rewards securing the low-stock piece first.
One fee, not one parcel
- Chose
- Promise a single fee, never a single package.
- Gave up
- A more appealing but less reliable promise.
- Why
- Orders can already ship in separate parcels.
When every piece is held
- Chose
- Show that the remaining pieces are being held by other shoppers, with a way to check again.
- Gave up
- A plain “sold out” message, which is simpler.
- Why
- A hold can expire in minutes, so “sold out” would not be true.
First to act, not first in the basket
- Chose
- The hold goes to whoever adds or reserves the piece while stock is low. A piece sitting in a basket is not reserved, but it is never removed without telling the shopper.
- Gave up
- Honoring the order in which pieces were added to baskets.
- Why
- Holding every basket as soon as stock gets low would run timers for people who aren’t on the site. Instead, the basket shows the piece’s real status when it’s opened: still available, low stock, or no longer available.
Customer and store
Secures the piece first and keeps shopping without paying delivery twice.
Fewer abandoned purchases and, as a hypothesis to validate, more orders per customer.
From product page to payment
Drag to compare
What I would validate
The hold duration, the 24-hour window and the impact on orders, with product, logistics and finance teams, using real usage data. Every value here is a design proposal.
How I would measure it. Fewer orders lost to pieces that sell out at payment, fewer refund requests through support, and no drop in completed purchases once the hold is introduced. How often the hold expires unused would show whether five minutes is the right length.
What depends on the system. Refunding automatically when a piece can’t be delivered needs Zara to know real availability at the moment of payment. Inditex has been tagging garments with RFID in its stores since the mid-2010s (reports from 2016 mention 1,542 stores live). I couldn’t confirm whether that in-store data is shared in real time with the website and app. This case assumes it could be, which is what retailers call available-to-promise. When many shoppers add the same piece at once, the system also has to reserve it for one shopper at a time, so two people never hold the same piece.
Key learnings
Urgency only works when it’s true. A timer helps when it reflects a real hold, and manipulates when it doesn’t.
A small interface fix can’t replace a system fix. The refund message helps, but the real solution lives in how stock is checked.
The end of a flow deserves as much design as the start. The moment the hold expires needed its own screen, so the customer isn’t left with a dead end.