Tag Porto: the real design is in the alternative flows

At Porto, I was the point person for the Sales Hub checkout, the ecosystem that brought together more than 80 products and services that used to live in separate flows. Every product team had to adapt to the rules we set to join the hub.

Tag Porto, the toll and parking tag built in partnership with ConectCar, was my responsibility.

The business goal was to sell the Porto credit card. So much so that the tag's main flow became a card funnel: eligible customers got the tag together with the card. It felt forced to me. People wanted a tag, not a card.

But the real problem started when the main flow failed, and it failed almost every time. An old rule only allowed the card for people who already had auto insurance, so almost nobody was eligible. For everyone else, the flow simply stopped: an interested customer, left empty-handed.

There was also the mirror case, in the reverse flow: cardholders could add a tag when signing up, without us knowing who already had one. The risk was offering a tag to someone who already owned it.

Not eligible? Nobody leaves empty-handed. The ConectCar partnership allowed something better than a "you can't": sending the customer, without friction, to a ConectCar page with Porto's visual identity, where they could buy a prepaid tag with no credit card needed. The exit became a path, not a closed door.

Eligibility impossible? Change the rule instead of accepting a fictional funnel. We pushed leadership to relax the card rules: if almost nobody got through, the whole funnel was fiction. The rules were relaxed.

Already a customer? Know before offering. To find out who already had a tag, the default answer was "there's no API". I proposed asking whoever certainly knew: the factory that produces and ships the tags to customers. After a lot of discussion, the bridge was approved, and it worked.

From the same product page, ordering follows three paths: cardholder, eligible for the card and not eligible. Eligible customers see the card offer with the tag and go through a seven-step form, from personal details to card setup, always showing where they are and what comes next.

Activation starts by identifying how the tag arrived, by mail or pick-up, and checks the CPF. Cardholders, pre-approved customers and unknown CPFs each have their own exit, including activation inside the Porto app. Privacy consent (LGPD) got its own opt-in and opt-out component.

Every alternative ending of the flow got a designed answer: people who were not eligible got the prepaid path, eligibility stopped being fiction and existing tag owners stopped getting repeated offers. None of the solutions needed new technology. All of them needed someone to refuse "it can't be done".

The lesson that stayed: the main flow is the easy half of the design. Real product work is what happens when things do not go as planned.