70% of surveyed users said they stop adding to cart purely from spending anxiety — not because the item isn't wanted. I reframed "spend more" as "spend smarter" and wrote the PRD to move AOV +8–15% without changing a single price.
Standard quick-commerce nudges ask users to spend their way to a reward — "spend ₹200 more for free delivery." For a meaningful share of users, that's read as a loss before it's read as a deal. The survey confirmed it wasn't a pricing problem at all.
The core design principle: replace spend-framed nudges with savings-framed nudges. The threshold, the discount, and the arithmetic stay identical — only the framing of what the user is being asked to do changes.
"Spend ₹200 more to get free delivery."
Frames the action as an additional cost the user has to justify.
"You're ₹40 away from unlocking it — add ₹200 to save."
Frames the identical action as progress toward a reward already in reach.
Translated the reframe into a small, shippable set of surface changes — scored qualitatively on reach, impact, confidence and effort so engineering could sequence with no ambiguity about what to build first.
Replace "spend more" copy across the cart with savings-framed equivalents at every existing threshold.
Visualize distance to the next savings unlock, so the reward feels close rather than abstract.
Surface bundles priced and labeled by the amount saved versus buying items separately.
Show total saved at order confirmation to reinforce the framing and build habit for next time.
Built a working Zepto prototype implementing the PRD's three core fixes: savings-framed cart nudges with "save a future ₹25 delivery fee" callouts, a multi-tier progress bar (₹199 free delivery → ₹299 coupon → ₹399 Super Saver) that keeps pulling users up the value ladder, and a "Complete Your Week" shelf surfacing frequently-bought items not yet in cart. Mobile-first, with Zepto's own purple branding and a ₹100 cart minimum before nudges appear.