Layaway & Installments
Building the most flexible payment solution in the ticketing industry.
Front Gate Tickets, Ticketmaster
2024-2026
Lead Product Designer
Problem & Context
Our first-party layaway solution allows fans to split up payments for higher price point items like multi-day passes without taking out a line of credit. Which was a huge win for fans and a strong flywheel revenue driver for Front Gate.
However, clients wanted more flexible payment options to cover scenarios like flat-rate deposits, and clear messaging high in the conversion funnel to educate fans.
Operationally hack-y workarounds were developed to accommodate some of these asks, but at a huge operational cost and financial reporting complexity.
Additionally, fans had no good way to self-serve their layaway needs without calling customer service.
Impact
Adoption - Events using layaway (2022) 94 events; avg 1.55 tickets per order
Conversion - +30% lift when layaway is offered
Revenue - +59–61% increase for clients using layaway
Cost to Support
Many improvements have been made to reduce the operational lift to create and maintain layaway plans
Reduced customer service cost by making layaway plans self-service to manage.]
Design & Development
Since 2016, I’ve contributed to every major development for the layaway offering at Front Gate. Currently, I am working with the Payments team at Ticketmaster to develop their own layaway solution, built off the learnings and success of layaway on the Front Gate platform.
Purchase Path Improvements
Layaway Order Manager
Designed the fan-facing layaway manager so fans can see their schedule, update cards, and pay off plans early, reducing support contacts and chargebacks.
Standardized flows for failed payments, cancellations, and refunds so operations could handle edge cases consistently at scale.
View Layaway Modal
Designed a View Layaway modal for the purchase path so fans could understand plan offerings before committing to checkout.
Clarified deposit, fees, and payment timing to cut confusion that previously drove a high share of layaway-related support inquiries and cart abandonment.
Backstage Configuration
Layaway Configuration
Simplified Backstage plan configuration to reduce the number of layaway plans per event, and reduce programming errors, so COMs can create and manage multiple events without engineering help.
Flat-Rate Layaway
Enabled “$X down” marketing (e.g., “$10 down” offers) via flat-rate deposits, increasing approachability for high-priced SKUs.
Paired flat deposits with flexible schedules so promoters can tune accessibility vs. risk for different events and tiers.
Fee Dispersal
Designed the fee dispersal configuration so plan fees can be spread across payments instead of all upfront, improving the flexibility for clients to configure plans.
Fees per Item
Led UX for per-item plan fees that charge layaway fees per qualifying ticket, rather than per order, unlocking up to ~45% additional revenue for some events.
Reporting
Ensured plan configuration (per-order vs per-item, fee dispersal, deposit model) is traceable in reporting so teams can tune plans based on real outcomes.
Ticketmaster Installments
In collaboration with the Ticketmaster Payments team to translate FGT layaway patterns into TM1 installment plan configuration.
Defined shared UX and configuration principles (plan templates, disclosures, fee rules) so TM’s installment solution has parity with Front Gate’s proven layaway results.