Over the past two years, the proportion of total purchasing customers who used the gifting service remained stagnant at around 6% to 8% each month. Notably, the percentage of first-time gift users dropped significantly from 65% to 41% within a year. These figures indicate that 29CM’s gifting service at the time failed to offer sufficient appeal to customers. On the flip side, with approximately 92% to 94% of monthly purchasing customers having never used the gifting feature, there remained a significant untapped opportunity.

There was little to no new user acquisition for the gifting feature, and its repurchase rate remained significantly low at 18% per month, compared to the online gifting market average of 48.1%. These figures clearly indicated that the service had entered a stagnation phase. There was a shared consensus that minor feature improvements would not be enough to overcome this plateau, leading to the conclusion that the existing gifting service could not support sustainable growth.

The renewal of the gifting home was a strategic initiative aimed at overcoming the limitations of a long-stagnant feature and driving sustainable growth. The core issue lay in the difficulty users experienced when selecting gifts and their fear of making the wrong choice. To address this, the experience was redesigned around two key directions: one, helping users discover hard-to-find gift ideas through curated suggestions; and two, reducing the perceived risk of failure by highlighting highly satisfying, proven products. Together, these approaches aimed to lower the entry barrier to using the gifting feature and simultaneously increase new user acquisition and repeat usage.

At the top of the gifting home, products likely to bring the highest satisfaction to recipients are recommended. These include popular items, new arrivals, top-reviewed products, and bestsellers, based on a variety of criteria. The selection and order of these products dynamically change with each session to provide a fresh experience. Additionally, some sections are manually curated to ensure a consistent offering of diverse and high-quality gift options.

The curation section, a core feature of the gifting home renewal, was designed to increase recipient satisfaction and reduce the risk of failed gift choices. The experience begins with the user selecting one of three categories—recipient, occasion, or preference. Each category offers 6 to 7 predefined options; for example, the “recipient” category includes choices like friend, partner, colleague, mentor, and parent. To reduce hesitation in making a selection, broader, more flexible options such as “anyone,” “anytime,” and “all preferences” are also provided. This initial choice serves as the entry point for a personalized curation flow, helping users navigate their decisions with greater clarity and confidence.

The gifting curation experience is structured into four steps, beginning with the user's initial selection on the gifting home. Users start by choosing one of three categories—recipient, occasion, or preference—which then dynamically shapes the following steps. For example, if “friend” is selected as the recipient in step one, step two will prompt the user with a message like “Looking for a gift for a friend?” and guide them to select an appropriate occasion. Step three asks for the recipient’s preferences, and step four collects gender information. These four inputs serve as the core criteria for personalized curation. Based on this data, products are recommended and sorted by purchase volume—one of the strongest intent signals. To avoid the friction of having to return to the home screen to make new selections, the product listing page allows users to easily modify their choices in real time. This enables a more seamless and flexible browsing experience, helping users discover a wider range of gifts quickly and intuitively, while enhancing both satisfaction and engagement in the selection process.

The “Popular Gifts” section showcases products currently generating the highest number of purchases through the gifting service. While it begins with an all-category view, it also highlights key categories with high purchase volume—such as Food, Beauty, Kitchen & Living, and Home & Interior—organized as tabs for easy navigation. Given that users tend to be more price-sensitive when buying gifts for others than for themselves, price filters like “Under 30,000 KRW” and “30,000–50,000 KRW” are provided to help users explore options within their budget comfortably. Products are displayed in a carousel format, four at a time, with up to 20 items shown by default. If users wish to browse further, they can click the “View All Popular Gifts” button to seamlessly explore a wider range of items through a scroll-based list. This structure allows users to quickly and easily compare popular gift options and make confident purchase decisions.

Event-based curation focuses on products tailored to specific occasions, such as Children's Day, or gifts with beautiful packaging that enhance the recipient's experience. Unlike everyday curation, this section is designed with a clear purpose and context in mind, offering product selections optimized for particular moments. For example, on Children's Day, it features popular toys and snacks for kids, while gifts for significant others might highlight emotionally resonant items with thoughtful packaging. These curated selections target a more specific audience compared to general recommendations, helping users quickly find gifts that perfectly match the occasion. Ultimately, event curation enhances relevance by focusing on specific needs and reduces the effort required to find the right gift for a particular moment.

The "Theme Gifts" section curates products based on open-ended, creative ideas rather than fixed formats or conventional categories. Instead of organizing items by standard filters, this section builds unique themes around moods, tones, or distinctive keywords. For example, combining words like “small,” “cute,” and “quirky” leads to a playful theme such as “Small, Cute, and Quirky Gifts”—an unconventional but engaging concept that naturally sparks user interest and curiosity. These themes are continuously brainstormed and tested, with those receiving strong user engagement pinned to the top or even expanded into larger editorial campaigns. Through this flexible and experimental approach, Theme Gifts adds a layer of creativity and delight to the gifting experience.

The item click-through rate on the gifting home increased by 7.1% in the variant group, and the purchase conversion rate also rose by 2.7%, indicating a stronger flow from product discovery to checkout. This suggests that the newly curated gifting home helped users feel more confident and assured in their gift-buying decisions. Additionally, the average number of item clicks per user rose significantly from 3.64 in the control group to 5.12 in the variant group. This implies that the renewed gifting home effectively encouraged broader exploration and increased user engagement. These quantitative results demonstrate that the gifting home renewal had a tangible impact on user behavior and provide a strong foundation for further scaling and continued improvement.