Case study 03 · IndiGo 6E Shop · 2024
Building a
Marketplace
from scratch.
IndiGo has 300,000+ daily visitors. The opportunity: turn flight traffic into retail revenue. I designed the 6E Shop — IndiGo's first embedded marketplace — from a blank canvas, architecting a shopping experience for passengers who came to book flights, not browse products.
01 · Context
A blank canvas and a big opportunity
IndiGo already had one of India's highest-traffic websites — millions of passengers visiting daily to book flights. The business question: could that traffic be monetised beyond aviation? The answer was the 6E Shop — IndiGo's first embedded retail marketplace.
There was no existing product, no prior design. I was brought in to design it from zero — defining the information architecture, the homepage experience, the category structure, and the visual language.
0
Starting point
Greenfield project — no existing design or product to reference.
9
Product categories
Electronics, audio, lifestyle, fragrances, appliances, gift cards and more.
300K+
Daily visitors
IndiGo's existing flight traffic — the audience the marketplace needed to convert.
02 · The core challenge
Selling to users who came to fly, not shop
The fundamental design tension: IndiGo's users had a single, clear intent — book a flight. A marketplace had to earn their attention without disrupting that primary journey. The risk wasn't building something ugly. It was building something that felt like an intrusion.
The design challenge was to make the 6E Shop feel like a natural extension of IndiGo's digital experience — discoverable, trustworthy, and fast to navigate — without ever competing with the flight booking flow.
“
The shop needs to feel like IndiGo built it — not like we plugged in someone else's website.
Business stakeholder · Project brief
03 · Problem definition
Defining what success looked like
Without an existing product to diagnose, discovery focused on understanding the user opportunity. I studied competitor travel retail platforms, analysed e-commerce patterns on similar high-intent sites, and worked with the business team to define the MVP goals.
Design brief
Design a marketplace that feels native to IndiGo — trustworthy, fast to navigate, and easy to discover — while converting a fraction of IndiGo's high-intent flight traffic into retail customers for the first time.
04 · Design process
Designing from zero
01
Competitive analysis — learning from travel retail globally
I studied how other airlines had introduced retail — Emirates Skywards, Air Asia Shop, MakeMyTrip. The pattern: successful implementations felt native to the travel brand, not like a generic marketplace dropped in.
Competitive analysis5 platformsPattern recognition
02
IA design — where does the shop live?
The biggest structural decision was placement. I mapped three options and presented them with traffic and conversion tradeoffs. A top-level navigation tab won — equal hierarchy to Hotels and Cars, permanently discoverable without disrupting booking flows.
Navigation placement3 options testedStakeholder alignment
03
Homepage design — earning attention in seconds
I designed the homepage in four progressive layers: a hero carousel for high-visibility promotions, an image-led category grid for fast browsing, editorial featured collection cards for curated discovery, and trust signal badges. The dark theme was deliberate — signalling "this is a different space" while still feeling branded.
Dark theme4 page sectionsCategory gridTrust signals
04
Category architecture — 9 categories, extensible structure
I defined the initial 9 categories and designed the grid as an extensible system with a "Stay tuned — more categories coming" placeholder, signalling growth without creating empty spaces.
9 categoriesExtensible gridGrowth planning
05
Trust by design — borrowed credibility from IndiGo
I designed a trust architecture: IndiGo branding throughout, transparent third-party disclosure, free shipping badges, secure payment icons, and dedicated support contacts. Every element was designed to transfer IndiGo's existing trust equity to the new retail experience.
Trust architectureBrand equity transferTransparency
05 · Final design
The shipped homepage
The following shows the 6E Shop homepage structure. Brand name is fictional for portfolio reference — the layout, category structure, dark theme, and all interaction patterns faithfully represent the shipped design.
Final design · IndiGo 6E Shop homepage · Desktop web · Fictional reference brand
SkyAir 6E
Hotels
Cars
Sightseeing
6E Shop
Holidays
More ▼
★ New Arrival
Galaxy Pro S24 & S25 on SkyShop
Exclusive prices for SkyAir passengers. Free shipping on all orders.
Shop now →
Disclaimer: SkyAir Retail, powered by ShopCo. Products offered by a third party. Read more
Add to cart with SkyShop
TV & Home Theatre · Home Appliances · Kitchen Appliances
Stay tuned!
more categories coming soon...
Slim. Seamless. Stunning
Explore the TV & Home Theatre Collection
Shop Now →
Your Smart Companion
Explore our Smart Watches
Shop Now →
Scents For Everyone
Discover Our Fragrances Collection
Shop Now →
🚚Free Shipping
Free on every order — No minimum required
🔒Secure Payments
100% secure payments guaranteed
📞Dedicated Support
Mon–Fri, 10 AM–7 PM
6E Shop homepage · Dark theme · Nav tab integration · Category grid · Featured collections · Trust signals · Fictional reference brand “SkyAir”
06 · Results
A new revenue stream launched
The 6E Shop launched as a live product embedded within IndiGo.com — the first time IndiGo had offered non-aviation retail to its passengers.
0→1
First marketplace IndiGo ever launched — designed entirely from scratch
9
Product categories live at launch with an extensible grid for future growth
✓
New non-aviation revenue stream successfully live on IndiGo.com
“
It looks and feels like IndiGo built it. That was the hardest thing to get right and you did it.
Business stakeholder · Post-launch review
07 · Reflection
What I would do differently
Greenfield projects are exhilarating but dangerous — the absence of constraints can lead to designing in a vacuum. The biggest lesson was how important early user validation is when there's no existing product to test against.
👥User test the concept earlier
We validated the design but not the concept — would IndiGo users actually shop here? Early concept testing would have given us faster signal.
📊Define conversion metrics from day one
We shipped without agreed KPIs. Click-through rate, add-to-cart rate, and category engagement should have been defined before design began.
📱Design mobile-first
Most IndiGo users are on mobile. I designed desktop-first and adapted down. The reverse would have caught mobile-specific layout issues earlier.
⏰The "coming soon" placeholder was a good call
Designing the category grid as extensible with a visible growth signal turned out to be a strong instinct — it set user expectations without empty spaces.