Redesigning Shopify’s onboarding experience to provide new merchants with tailored apps to reduce entrepreneurship’s barriers to entry.
As part of the Shopify x BrainStation 24-hour hackathon, my multidisciplinary team of Data Scientists, Web Developers and UX Designers and I were tasked with developing a digital solution that makes entrepreneurship more accessible by leveraging Shopify’s existing ecosystem.
I contributed to UX research, ideation, wireframing, prototyping, and UI design while ensuring that it remained consistent and aligned with Shopify’s Polaris design system and branding.
As this was the first time we were working with other people outside of our respective disciplines, I felt it was important to take the time to get to know my fellow team members, comprised of UX Designers, Data Scientists and Web Developers. We took the first hour to talk about our new career path change, learn about each other's disciplines, crack a few jokes and most importantly, come up with a witty team name. We were assigned team #11 with seven members, so naturally... The 7-Eleven!
Taking the time to get acquainted with each other truly made the following 23 hours feel like a breeze. Not only did it allow us to get a better scope of the project's feasibility, knowing what each member could bring to the table, but we also now had a great team dynamic that allowed for easy communication throughout the hackathon.
As we only had 24 hours, we had to be agile and adapt the design-thinking process to work within the allocated time while ensuring we designed a solution that kept the user at the center of the design.
With a 23% market share in the U.S., Shopify remains one of the most popular eCommerce platforms available. Currently, it has over 2.1 million daily active users and more than 1.75 million merchants.
When Shopify came to us to solve a design challenge, they asked us: How might we better leverage the Shopify Ecosystem to make entrepreneurship more accessible than ever before?
Before jumping into problem solving, my team and I decided to get a deeper understanding of our client, Shopify, and its ecosystem. We found that their ecosystem is made up of three main components.
Shopify Merchants
The Shopify App Store
The Shopify Partner Program
Having a good understanding of our client and its ecosystem, we began to narrow our focus on the problem space by conducting secondary research. Through research and social listening on online forums and the Shopify’s review section, we gathered user insights and realized there was a gap between the Shopify App Store and first-time merchants.
Shopify Merchants
66% of entrepreneurs don’t have any prior
business or e-commerce education.
Most Shopify merchants are
first-time entrepreneurs.
Only 9% of entrepreneurs have a
Bachelor's Degree in business.
THE Shopify APP STORE
87% of merchants use
third-party apps
Apps provide tremendous benefits and
functionalities to boost merchants' online store.
With over 8,000 apps, new merchants can be overwhelmed by the options available.
We believe that new entrepreneurs don’t have adequate knowledge when it comes to confidently growing their online business. Providing tailored app recommendations to new entrepreneurs will help them launch their new online business and lower the barrier of entry.
With such a small time frame, we did not conduct primary research however, we created a proto-persona based on our secondary research and from the user insights we gained from social listening. This allowed us to always keep our user at the forefront while designing our solution.
How might we better understand potential new entrepreneurs in order to
optimize app recommendations to alleviate their confusion?
After having a clear idea of who we were designing for and a refined design challenge to solve, we knew we needed to bridge the gap between new entrepreneurs and Shopify’s App Store.
Having determined that our target user needs some guidance when selecting the best tools for their online store, we decided to elevate the way Shopify recommends apps to new entrepreneurs. But how do we know what they need?
After having a clear idea of who we were designing for and a refined design challenge to solve, we knew we needed to bridge the gap between new entrepreneurs and Shopify’s App Store.
Having determined that our target user needs some guidance when selecting the best tools for their online store, we decided to elevate the way Shopify recommends apps to new entrepreneurs. But how do we know what they need?
To recommend entrepreneurs with apps best suited to their needs, we had to acquire more data during the onboarding process. Consulting with our Data Scientists teammates was vital as they provided us with the optimal questions for a Questionnaire to narrow down the app recommendations.
In addition, the Data Scientist would enhance the Recommender System through machine learning based on existing merchants with similarities.
I mapped the current journey users followed when creating a new store and quickly identified an opportunity to intervene with our solution. Initially, once users entered their store information, they were directly brought to the Shopify dashboard and left to their own devices. We intervened with our new onboarding questionnaire after merchants input store info in order to benefit from recommended apps once they get to the dashboard.
My fellow UX designer and I began exploratory sketching in order to translate our task flow into a concrete digital solution. With the Web Dev members, we communicated our design ideas and discussed any constraints or considerations before moving forward to prototyping to ensure that our design was feasible to meet the deadline.
To ensure app consistency and establish branding guidelines, we relied on Shopify’s expansive design system, Polaris, when designing our wireframes.
With the use of the Polaris design system and after confirming with the Web Developers that there were no further concerns regarding the design decisions, my fellow UX designer and I began building the wireframes.
In the end, our team developed a bespoke onboarding experience for new Shopify merchants. Through data-driven app recommendations, the barriers to entry for new entrepreneurs are significantly reduced through tailored apps that best suit their business needs.
Prior to this industry project, all academic projects were solely designed by myself or with fellow UX designers, so being able to work and consult with Data Scientists and Web Developers allowed us to bounce ideas off each other while taking into consideration each team's capabilities. Being able to gauge solutions’ feasibility by getting direct feedback from the other disciplines and knowing their constraints was definitely the biggest takeaway I gained from this cross-disciplinary project.
