Express Shipping Dashboard
A dashboard to simplify managing online shipments for small and medium-sized businesses.
Date
2021
Role
Solo Product Designer
About The Project
Platforms like Shopify, Etsy, WooCommerce and others have made it easier for individuals and small companies to become international e-merchants. However, not all merchants are prepared to handle the intricacies of global logistics. Beeontrade, an omnichannel logistics company, wanted the solve this problem for small and medium sized e-commerce businesses based in Türkiye.
Understanding the Problem
We started the project with a stakeholder meeting to gain a better understanding of the business, product vision, constraints and existing solutions. I have also audited existing solutions, focusing on two main competitors.
Through these process, I tried to find answers to these questions:
How are potential customers currently handling the international shipping process?
Are they aware of existing solutions to the problem?
If so, how are their experience with the existing solutions?
What are the major pain points?
What are the key factors that influence decision to use or not use a product like this?
I have identified 5 pain points to ideate from:
Lack of support: Poor customer support was one of the most important themes, people expect these platforms to help them throughout their shipping journey.
Obscurity on customs procedures: Some users may not have sufficient knowledge about customs procedures. The absence of precaution on the part of shippers can cause items to become stuck at customs and result in unexpected additional fees.
Differences in measurements: There seems to be a discord between customers and the platforms regarding package measurements and therefore the final price.
Difficulty with returns: I have found out that managing returns and rejections posed a significant challenge, particularly for sellers with high-value items.
The competitor audit showed us that the existing solutions have a complicated interface and a bloated information architecture.
I have created two personas based on the information I have gained. Throughout the design process, I based my decisions on these two personas; a power user and a casual user.
To understand user pain points and opportunities, I have created a user journey map based on one of our personas, Nermin.
Design
With our limited time, we aimed to prioritize the essentials and avoid overloading the product with nice to have features
How might we eliminate the uncertainty of customs procedures?
International transportation and customs procedures are complex even for the logistics professionals. But, in order to decrease the uncertainty, we tried to be transparent about the cost by breaking it down and showing the duties and additional fees.
Dealing with discrepancies in measurements
The prices for shipments are shown based on the measurements the user enters, but the final price is decided after the logistics provider (DHL, FedEx etc.) measures the package. If there are no discrepancies everything goes perfectly but if there is, the users are met with surprise fees.
We have ideated about different solutions like charging extra upfront and refunding if there is no mismatch between measurements. But eventually we go with warning users about common causes of mismeasurements and instructing the right way. While this does not solve the problem, it is the quick way to alleviate some possible issues.
Decreasing the need for one on one customer support
While one-on-one customer support is necessary, it is also very costly. Both of our main competitors had an F.A.Q., and one of them had a chat feature that required customer support personnel. We considered chatbots, automated emails, and a process to identify and address common pain points, but due to time limitations, we tried to prioritize self-service support.
UI Design
We decided to use a UI Kit that was based on Material UI to reduce design and development time. I have customized the kit for our brand and created components that met our specific needs.
Conclusion
Working on this project was a very instructive experience and grew me as a product designer and helped me improve my collaboration skills. Unfortunately, this product has never launched although it was briefly beta tested by some users.
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