Credit Card Review Page

Overview

Problem:
High-intent users reached credit card review pages but struggled to quickly assess value, compare alternatives, and confidently act on a revenue-critical, SEO-sensitive surface.

Context:
These pages sit at the intersection of editorial trust, marketplace comparison, and affiliate conversion, making change inherently high-risk at scale.

Role:
Senior Product Designer leading problem framing, system-level design, and execution in partnership with Product and Engineering.

Result:
Shipped a scalable review template that improved decision clarity and preserved trust while enabling sustained conversion opportunities across desktop and mobile.

Business & Platform Context

Credit card review pages are one of NerdWallet’s highest-leverage surfaces:

• Significant organic traffic

• Strong downstream revenue impact

• Strict editorial and compliance requirements

Users arrived at these pages at different decision depths, ranging from quick confirmation to deep research. The existing experience did not clearly support both behaviors, creating friction at the moment of choice.

The core risk:
Optimizing for conversion could degrade trust and SEO; preserving trust could limit monetization.

Why This Was Hard

This was a platform-level problem, not a page redesign.

Key constraints:

• Structural changes could impact search rankings

• Editorial credibility could not be compromised

• The solution needed to scale across all future product reviews

• User intent varied significantly, even within the same session

There was no single “correct” outcome, only better tradeoffs.

Strategy

Rather than increasing surface-level optimization, the strategy focused on decision support:

1. Make credibility and orientation explicit

2. Reduce cognitive load during comparison

3. Allow users to act when they are ready

The work was scoped intentionally to avoid unnecessary system risk and shipped as an A/B test.

Key Decisions & Tradeoffs

Preserve editorial authority at the top

• Chose not to optimize the header for conversion

• Maintained authorship, editorship, and freshness signals

• Protected trust and SEO at the expense of short-term clicks

Optimize for scannability, not density

• Introduced visual grouping, hierarchy, and navigation

• Accepted less information above the fold

• Enabled faster comprehension across varied intent levels

Make conversion persistent, not intrusive

• Implemented sticky and secondary application modules

• Reduced urgency pressure

• Aligned CTAs with real decision timing

System Design

The resulting system:

• Supported linear and non-linear reading

• Enabled side-by-side evaluation without leaving the page

• Created a reusable template for future reviews

• Balanced editorial neutrality with commercial outcomes

This was designed as infrastructure, not a one-off.

Demo

Outcomes

• Improved clarity at decision moments

• Maintained search performance post-launch

• Reduced internal tension between editorial and product teams

• Established a scalable review framework used across categories

Where metrics were directional, the primary success was risk-managed iteration on a high-impact surface.

Role & Collaboration

I led this work end-to-end, partnering with:

• Product on scope, guardrails, and success criteria

• Engineering on feasibility and rollout

• Editorial stakeholders on trust and compliance alignment

This project required senior judgment, cross-functional influence, and system-level thinking.

Appendix

These designs show key moments: entering from navigation to the CardFinder landing page (which I designed), and the

wizard that leads to recommendations and then to a credit card review.