Overview

I was approached by leadership to redesign the homepage for the Shopify Search and Discover app, a product that had launched in Alpha to a select group of merchants.

Role

I was a UX Manager leading a team of 3 designers. I took on the role of individual contributor (design lead) to drive the project from inception to production.

Collaborators

I worked with the following people/teams:

• Product team

• Product manager (Search and Discovery)

• Data scientist

• Director of engineering (prev. Director of analytics)

• Fullstack engineer

• Shopify Polaris design system lead

• Content designer

• Marketing team

• UX researcher

• Shopify app teams (Inbox, Marketing, Flow)

• Shopify analytics team

Design Challenges

• Polaris Design System: There were issues utilizing Polaris since our app used a different set of technologies.

• New metrics banner: Polaris team was rolling out a new component adding pressure to align the launch timelines.

• Metrics: We weren't entirely sure what metrics were to be available for merchants.

Problem

The original overview page lacked visualization of search-related insights that we’ve learned merchants desire. Without this information, merchants lack critical information of their overall search performance which they could use the Disco app to improve/take action with. In addition, we learned in early access, general search performance metrics is one of the most popular requests.

Opportunities

• Education: Leverage help center resources to educate merchants

• Insight: Highlight insights for merchants to take action on

• Consistency: New design could inform how other teams at Shopify redesign their app home pages

Research

For the project to be a success, I needed to work with other teams. To kick the project off, I initiated an audit of our current experiences to develop an idea of the scope of the project. What had other teams explored? What worked and didn’t work? My main design collaborators were the Inbox and Marketing automations team, with whom I met on a regular basis to share updates and solicit feedback.

It was my first time working with dashboards at Shopify in the competitive search and discovery space. I needed to quickly ramp up. In addition to an audit, I also completed a competitive analysis and documented common interaction and design patterns used.

Exploration

After exploring a number of different options and discussing with multiple teams, we landed on an information architecture that included all the components of an optimal landing page solution, while offering teams the flexibility to exclude sections without breaking the design.

Final design

For the final design, we had the difficulty of cutting scope to meet the project deadline. Some of the features that fell out of scope included:

• Expanded metrics drill-down: We had many debates over whether we needed to offer a metrics drill-down experience within the app. The admin analytics page already had a surface that most admins were accustomed to using to deep-dive into metrics. As a result, we weren't entirely sure whether the new experience of drill-down metrics within the app would be duplicative work that yielded any additional value. There would also be significant investment of development time to bring in the new in-app drill-down experience. Lastly, we decided since our desire was for the app to provide specific search insights relevant to helping merchants grow their revenue, adding additional metrics would be unnecessary.

Closing thoughts

The launch was successful and received over 200,000 installs within the first week. The app ratings were initially low (2.0/5), but through continued improvements eventually improved to a 4.2/5 ratings.

The launch was not without its challenges. I personally wish we had spent more time prioritizing metrics and scoping that more tightly to possibly avoid the many design cycles that at times felt unnecessary.