Product design for Shopify Collective

A native B2B sales channel and app

A native B2B sales channel and app

A native B2B sales channel and app

Overview

Shopify Collective empowers Shopify merchants to connect, share, and sell their products through other merchants, using drop shipping to boost revenue without significant upfront costs.

Summary

Summary

Summary

As UX Lead I managed a remote team of five designers across Europe, successfully guiding five project teams—Onboarding, Discovery, Connections, Orders, and Shipping through the development and beta launch of the Shopify Collective sales channel and app, surpassing initial KPIs by 50%-130%.


I strengthened team communication and product strategy by taking product management classes, leading research initiatives, and initiating weekly coaching sessions with four senior UX mangers. By collaborating with engineering and product leadership, my teams achieved faster product iterations and better alignment.


I rebuilt team trust and strengthened connections by restructuring weekly design rituals, effectively addressing remote work challenges and fostering a more supportive and productive team environment.


As UX Lead I managed a remote team of five designers across Europe, successfully guiding five project teams—Onboarding, Discovery, Connections, Orders, and Shipping through the development and beta launch of the Shopify Collective sales channel and app, surpassing initial KPIs by 50%-130%.


I strengthened team communication and product strategy by taking product management classes, leading research initiatives, and initiating weekly coaching sessions with four senior UX mangers. By collaborating with engineering and product leadership, my teams achieved faster product iterations and better alignment.


I rebuilt team trust and strengthened connections by restructuring weekly design rituals, effectively addressing remote work challenges and fostering a more supportive and productive team environment.


As UX Lead I managed a remote team of five designers across Europe, successfully guiding five project teams—Onboarding, Discovery, Connections, Orders, and Shipping through the development and beta launch of the Shopify Collective sales channel and app, surpassing initial KPIs by 50%-130%.


I strengthened team communication and product strategy by taking product management classes, leading research initiatives, and initiating weekly coaching sessions with four senior UX mangers. By collaborating with engineering and product leadership, my teams achieved faster product iterations and better alignment.


I rebuilt team trust and strengthened connections by restructuring weekly design rituals, effectively addressing remote work challenges and fostering a more supportive and productive team environment.


Design team

Jakob Lotspeich, Senior UX Manager

Michelle Gerrard-Doyle, Staff Designer

Tom Collerton, Sr. Designer

Vince Hudson, Sr. Designer

Jolanta Cariova, Sr. Designer

Edgaras Predkelis, Sr. Designer

Benas Veselis, Designer

Jenny Hwang, Staff Researcher

Sophie Allcock, Sr. Content Designer


Timeline

2019 - 2024

Design team

Jakob Lotspeich, Senior UX Manager

Michelle Gerrard-Doyle, Staff Designer

Tom Collerton, Sr. Designer

Vince Hudson, Sr. Designer

Jolanta Cariova, Sr. Designer

Edgaras Predkelis, Sr. Designer

Benas Veselis, Designer

Jenny Hwang, Staff Researcher

Sophie Allcock, Sr. Content Designer


Timeline

2019 - 2024

Design team

Jakob Lotspeich, Senior UX Manager

Michelle Gerrard-Doyle, Staff Designer

Tom Collerton, Sr. Designer

Vince Hudson, Sr. Designer

Jolanta Cariova, Sr. Designer

Edgaras Predkelis, Sr. Designer

Benas Veselis, Designer

Jenny Hwang, Staff Researcher

Sophie Allcock, Sr. Content Designer


Timeline

2019 - 2024

Key projects

I worked on many more projects during my time at Shopify; if you're interested in hearing about any of them please reach out. 

I worked on many more projects during my time at Shopify; if you're interested in hearing about any of them please reach out. 

Improving the orders and payments experience for merchants

Business need

For merchants using Collective, navigating the order, payment, and fulfillment process involves additional complexity because one party (the retailer) receives an order while another party (the supplier) fulfills it on their behalf.


After the public launch, numerous support tickets highlighted a double payment error caused by manual payment capture, which slowed fulfillment and eroded trust in both merchants and the Collective platform.

Goal

Reduce payment related customer complaints by identifying the cause of the double charge error to enable suppliers to focus on faster order fulfillment.

Personal challenge

Shopify's platform is designed around a one-to-one merchant-to-customer relationship. This posed significant challenges when adapting to the needs of Collective, which required supporting three distinct groups: retailers, suppliers, and customers. Even minor changes to core merchant flows required extensive buy-in and approval from multiple teams, including senior design and engineering stakeholders.


Over four months I took on the added role of product manager (in the absence of one) leading an initiative to map existing orders, payments, and fulfillment flows. I defined the problem and strategy with key stakeholders, closely partnering with engineering to address technical constraints. And collaborated with three separate design teams working in the Orders, Payments, and Fulfillment space in Core to identify the limitations of the current design system for B2B workflows.


Based on this work I designed a solution for Collective that accounted for future feature developments, preventing redundant work for both design and engineering. This holistic approach secured buy-in from all key stakeholders and ensured alignment across the organization.

Business need

For merchants using Collective, navigating the order, payment, and fulfillment process involves additional complexity because one party (the retailer) receives an order while another party (the supplier) fulfills it on their behalf.


After the public launch, numerous support tickets highlighted a double payment error caused by manual payment capture, which slowed fulfillment and eroded trust in both merchants and the Collective platform.

Goal

Reduce payment related customer complaints by identifying the cause of the double charge error to enable suppliers to focus on faster order fulfillment.

Personal challenge

Shopify's platform is designed around a one-to-one merchant-to-customer relationship. This posed significant challenges when adapting to the needs of Collective, which required supporting three distinct groups: retailers, suppliers, and customers. Even minor changes to core merchant flows required extensive buy-in and approval from multiple teams, including senior design and engineering stakeholders.


Over four months I took on the added role of product manager (in the absence of one) leading an initiative to map existing orders, payments, and fulfillment flows. I defined the problem and strategy with key stakeholders, closely partnering with engineering to address technical constraints. And collaborated with three separate design teams working in the Orders, Payments, and Fulfillment space in Core to identify the limitations of the current design system for B2B workflows.


Based on this work I designed a solution for Collective that accounted for future feature developments, preventing redundant work for both design and engineering. This holistic approach secured buy-in from all key stakeholders and ensured alignment across the organization.

Results

Results

85% decline in payment related complaints

~4.5% decrease in order fulfilment time

Decreased bounce rate

Discovery research to increase merchant connections

Business need

After the public launch of Collective all our data pointed to a high installation rate (yay!) but a low connection rate (not so yay). Installations mean very little if merchants don’t make connections and start sharing products. If we didn’t address this problem fast we risked a serious drop in merchant retention.

Goal

Identify why merchants, particularly retailers, install the app but fail to make connections, and collaborate with senior stakeholders and the project team to prioritize and implement fixes, ultimately increasing connections to boost merchant retention.

Personal challenge

I designed version one of our onboarding flow, homepage and search. Clearly we had lots to improve around the discovery and connection process and although it’s not always easy to kill your darlings I trusted our data. With senior product leads looking for answers I spearheaded a mixed method research study. With only three weeks to plan, run and share the results of this work I had to move smart and fast. 


I collaborated with data, delegated small research tasks to other designers on the team, used existing design mocks to test our assumptions and got help from business development to identify the right type of merchants for this research. As the interviews took place I drip fed the findings to the team so they could take immediate action on relevant insights along the way.

Business need

After the public launch of Collective all our data pointed to a high installation rate (yay!) but a low connection rate (not so yay). Installations mean very little if merchants don’t make connections and start sharing products. If we didn’t address this problem fast we risked a serious drop in merchant retention.

Goal

Identify why merchants, particularly retailers, install the app but fail to make connections. Collaborate with senior stakeholders and the project team to prioritize and implement fixes, with the goal of increasing connections to boost merchant retention.

Personal challenge

I designed version one of our onboarding flow, homepage and search. Clearly we had lots to improve around the discovery and connection process and although it’s not always easy to kill your darlings I trusted our data. With senior product leads looking for answers I spearheaded a mixed method research study. With only three weeks to plan, run and share the results of this work I had to move smart and fast. 


I collaborated with data, delegated small research tasks to other designers on the team, used existing design mocks to test our assumptions and got help from business development to identify the right type of merchants for this research. As the interviews took place I drip fed the findings to the team so they could take immediate action on relevant insights along the way.

Business need

After the public launch of Collective all our data pointed to a high installation rate (yay!) but a low connection rate (not so yay). Installations mean very little if merchants don’t make connections and start sharing products. If we didn’t address this problem fast we risked a serious drop in merchant retention.

Goal

Identify why merchants, particularly retailers, install the app but fail to make connections. Collaborate with senior stakeholders and the project team to prioritize and implement fixes, with the goal of increasing connections to boost merchant retention.

Personal challenge

I designed version one of our onboarding flow, homepage and search. Clearly we had lots to improve around the discovery and connection process and although it’s not always easy to kill your darlings I trusted our data. With senior product leads looking for answers I spearheaded a mixed method research study. With only three weeks to plan, run and share the results of this work I had to move smart and fast. 


I collaborated with data, delegated small research tasks to other designers on the team, used existing design mocks to test our assumptions and got help from business development to identify the right type of merchants for this research. As the interviews took place I drip fed the findings to the team so they could take immediate action on relevant insights along the way.

Results

23% increase in connection rate

60% increase in number of merchants with 1+ connection

60% increase merchants with 1+ connection

12% decrease in time to first connection

Rethinking discovery to help retailers make their first connection

Business need

Collective, now a newly launched product, was still figuring out its product-market fit. Qualitative research told us that merchants were confused about where to start and what to do first after first installation. Quantitative data told us that only 2 out of 10 merchants had an established connection allowing them to actively share price lists and products. A majority of merchants did not understand how Collective works because they were not taking the first crucial step to make a connection.   

Goal

Improve the top-of funnel onboarding experience so that once a merchant signs up they understand the core product offering and connect with other merchants.  

Personal challenge

The initiative required updates across multiple touchpoints within and outside the app, with ownership split between UX, marketing, and business development. Ensuring clarity on who owned what was crucial for aligning everyone toward the same goal.


I drafted clear and concise project briefs for the design team and ensured regular check-ins between designers and stakeholders from marketing and business development. I advocated for a holistic approach, considering all touch points merchants interact with, including rethinking email content, building landing pages, and collaborating with marketing to showcase impactful case studies.

Results

23% increase in connection rate

95% search adoption

95% search adoption reached

95% search adoption reached

62% higher onboarding completion 

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