Shopify Markets Pro
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Overview
Leading the UX design for Shopify Markets Pro, the premium counterpart to Shopify Markets, was an exhilarating project for me. Assigned to spearhead key aspects of this massive initiative, I worked across multiple teams within the Markets organization to help guide a substantial and multifaceted undertaking.
Commencing my involvement upon joining Shopify in early 2022, I took charge of leading the end-to-end user experience for Shopify Markets Pro, building it from the ground up.
Problem
Cross-border commerce presents substantial growth opportunities for merchants, but also introduces operational and legal complexities. Challenges like import duties, taxes, shipping rates, fraud, and legal restrictions pose significant overhead and legal risks for merchants.
Our partnership with Global-e to aimed to address many of these challenges. However, it was crucial to ensure that Global-e was confident in understanding the liabilities and risks associated with our merchants, as they would become the Merchant of Record for them with Market Pro.
Approach
Fundamentally, the end-to-end experience with Markets Pro can be split into five different phases:
- Sell
- Pre-Application
- Application
- Activation
- Usage
During my time working on Markets Pro, different teams were focusing on various phases of the experience. While I oversaw the end-to-end experience, my primary focus areas were Pre-Application, Application, Activation, and some parts of Usage.
01. Sell
This phase was primarily focused on marketing-related efforts inside the Shopify admin, as well as outside through landing pages, email outreach, and more.
Inside the Shopify admin, we utilized various channels to promote Markets Pro. Additionally, we shared compelling insights with eligible merchants to pique their interest in trying out Markets Pro.
02. Pre-Application
Due to the complexity of Markets Pro and some critical limitations (e.g. DHL Express as the only available shipping method), we had to ensure that all merchants were funneled through the same educational materials.
Especially, the early product limitation with only supporting DHL Express for shipping was a significant issue and a reason for numerous iterations and feedback sessions with merchants.
03. Application
During the application phase, our primary objective was to gather all the necessary data for Global-e to make a decision regarding becoming the Merchant of Record for a specific merchant for all internal sales. This process exhibited significant parallels with typical Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures and other internal Shopify workflows, such as those involving Shopify Payments.
Although our long-term vision aimed at streamlining processes and eliminating the need for an application flow for most merchants, this initial step was crucial in the early phases of Markets Pro. It ensured a focused approach on high-quality merchants and instilled confidence in our partners to undertake international liabilities.
04. Activation
After a merchant is approved to use Markets Pro, we would require them to go through a handful of activation steps. These steps do not require any actual work, but are more to educate them about the changes Markets Pro would make to their store for their internal customers.
During the development phase, we tried to categorize different information and steps of the Activation into two buckets: What the fuck? and Good to know. These two concepts illustrated quite naturally the feeling we aimed to prevent (What the fuck?) and get (Good to know) from merchants starting using Markets Pro.
The primary reason why the activation was such an important step for us in the beginning was that Markets Pro made numerous changes to the international side of your store, and reverting them was very time-consuming.
05. Usage
Markets Pro operates as a background product, seamlessly integrating into Shopify to bring about changes, add supplementary information, and enhance functionality across numerous areas. There isn't a distinct surface where a merchant explicitly "uses Markets Pro" as it is deeply ingrained within Shopify itself.
The integration spans various aspects, including orders, products, shipping labels, HS codes, checkout, and more. Collaboration with diverse teams across Shopify was essential to align necessary changes and seamlessly implement them on the platform.
Outcome
As outlined above, Markets Pro was a significant undertaking that required deep integration into various aspects of Shopify. In my role leading UX design from inception through EA (Early Access) to closure before GA (General Availability), we gained valuable insights. Early product limitations, such as exclusive support for DHL Express, surfaced as significant obstacles hindering merchant progress.
Shopify Markets Pro is a turnkey operations solution—it's like adding a new department to your team.
Despite temporary constraints, such as the DHL Express exclusivity, we forged impactful success stories with our merchants from the project's early stages.
Notably, case studies like WOLFpak sees a 528% increase in cross-border revenue with Shopify Markets Pro or Glamlite increasing their growth in international sales by 2.25 times underscored the remarkable collaborative efforts of diverse teams involved in the project.