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Aligning Dealer & Customer Needs
To Drive eCommerce GMV Growth
COMPANY
Chipply
MODEL
B2B
ROLE
Product Designer
DEVICE
Desktop, Mobile
TECH STACK
Figma, Figma Make, Lovable, Jira
Introduction
Founded in 2010, Chipply is an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software for apparel decorators and dealers. These businesses use our platform to launch eCommerce stores, manage orders, coordinate production, and fulfill shipments for their customers.
As a product designer on a team of (2), I've been able to take significant ownership over projects, often within design-led initiatives. Designing systems that are set up to evolve has been critical as we build end-to-end features. I've really enjoyed the complex workflows and high level of systems thinking required.
The Ecosystem
Apparel Dealer
A company that sells decorated apparel
Pacific Sportswear
Promo Outfitters
Organization
An entity that needs decorated apparel
Football Team
Tech Company
eCom Customer
A shopper who buys decorated apparel
Football Dad
New Employee
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Capitalizing on eCommerce Revenue Opportunities
Chipply collects a percentage of the Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of eCom stores run on our platform. In other words, more purchases across more dealer stores = more Chipply revenue.
Despite representing the sole revenue source, our eCom stores were outdated and full of friction for shoppers. Similarly, the store builder for dealers lacked customization and branding.
Our design team spearheaded an initiative to drive eCom growth through the shopping experience and dealer store builder.
Improved Shopping
Experience
Browsing
Conversion
Configurable
Store Builder
Organizations
Stores
GMV
Revenue
Identifying Friction in the Shopping Experience
To locate problem areas, we conducted a somewhat scrappy research project of analyzing session recordings from eCom customers. This research was critical to convincing stakeholders to invest engineering resources in the project, as it clearly demonstrated how our poor shopping experience was leaving GMV on the table.
What obstacles in the eCom experience are limiting shopping and constraining GMV performance?
We found that, despite accounting for the majority of users, the mobile bounce rate was 2x greater than on desktop. This signaled that our desktop-first eCommerce experience was not serving our users, who predominantly shop on mobile.
68.7%
mobile users vs 30.7% desktop
2x
bounce rate on mobile vs desktop
Supporting this shift to mobile-first, we were able to determine problem areas for quick wins across the shopping journey.
1
Discovery
How users intentionally, or unintentionally, find products of interest.
2
Selection
How users evaluate items to determine whether to add them to their cart.
3
Conversion
How users place an order, turning interest into a transaction.
Dealer Configurability Unlocks New Markets
Our annual survey found that a primary need for dealers was increased customization on eCom stores. Before launching into a solution, we decided to dig into our user groups to find the root cause of this need. We looped this into an ongoing user persona initiative, and interviewed Sales, Marketing, and customers to analyze key players in Chipply ecosystem.
What factors are driving the demand for store customization, and what new opportunities could a store builder unlock?
We found that our dealers can be categorized as Team Dealers or Promotional Distributors. Team Dealers serve high schools and leagues, and need to set up tons of quick, simple stores every season. On the contrary, Promo Distributors face a competitive market among corporate clients.
Securing big organizational contracts requires customized, differentiated store experiences. In other words, while a salesperson for a team dealer may set up 10 identical stores a day, the equivalent position for a promo distributor likely spends several weeks customizing a store to secure a brand deal.
Importantly, Chipply is expanding into these high-GMV promo spaces, which is why the need for customization has been so loud.
Team Dealer
ORGANIZATION
Schools, Teams, & Local Programs
BUSINESS MODEL
Customers per store
Stores
STORE CHARACTERISTICS
Short, seasonal
Modest branding
Required and standard products
Promo Distributor
ORGANIZATION
Large Corporations & Groups
BUSINESS MODEL
Customers per store
Stores
STORE CHARACTERISTICS
Long-running
Strong brand identity
Product deals and special collections
Based on this user research and analyzing other site builders, we identified 3 key areas for configurability:
Promotional Content
Differentiated Product Displays
Branding & Imagery
Designing for Modularity
As we approached these goals, we needed to hold two truths: promotional dealers want to spend weeks on a store, while team dealers want to spend 2-minutes.
How can we provide deep configurability, without limiting efficiency?
At first, we thought in templates ("how cool if we had 'Sporty', 'Modern,' etc. stores). But, we soon realized we needed to refocus on the primitives and then build our way up to templates. Starting top-down would only result in limitations, as users couldn't untangle their preset template.
By first identifying the primitives for each area, we could work from the bottom-up. The resulting modular system can yield almost endless combinations, and is very well set up to accomodate more configurations in the future.
Top-Down
Templates
Options
vs
Bottom-Up
Combinations
Primitives
While referencing other site builders was helpful, we have particular restraints in that most of our dealers don't want to be designers, they just want things to "look good." We needed to package deep configurability within a foolproof system with guardrails for styles and accessibility standards.
We traced down to the primitives across Styles, Product Layouts, and a new Landing Page. Styles v1 includes a color theme and accent color. Users can combine default, spotlighted, or boosted layouts to create unique product lists. The new landing page has modules like suggested, featured, and banners.
With the primitives defined, the exercise became one of hierarchy and information architecture. Our central goal was to create a system that is set up to grow as the feature expands in the future.
Quick Wins from Discovery to Conversion
With limited engineering scope for this project, we highlighted targeted improvements to the shopping journey based on our session recordings. Rather than reinventing the wheel, we relied heavily on research into top eCom sites, like Shop and major retailers.
