eHyped: E-commerce Storefront Platform for Small Businesses
Designed a B2B SaaS solution to empower businesses to reach a wider audience with minimal technical effort through ready-to-use storefront templates and store management tools.
Background
eHyped is a B2B SaaS solution designed to help small and medium-sized businesses get online quickly by offering e-commerce-ready storefront templates. The platform provides a dashboard for business owners to manage their storefronts, track sales, manage inventory, and handle marketing efforts through an intuitive, user-friendly interface.
The primary goal of the project was to empower businesses to reach a wider audience with minimal technical effort.
The Challenge
Many small businesses lacked the resources or technical know-how to set up and maintain an online storefront. Small business owners needed a way to establish an online presence quickly, without dealing with the technical challenges of traditional e-commerce platforms.
The (Business) Opportunity
eHyped had the opportunity to fill a gap in the market. By creating a streamlined e-commerce platform tailored for small businesses, we saw an opportunity to capture a niche market. By addressing pain points such as ease of setup, analytics, and marketing, eHyped could differentiate itself by focusing on ease of use, rapid setup, and built-in marketing tools, helping small businesses increase their reach and revenue.
Problem statement
Small business owners find it difficult to set up and manage an online store due to complex platform requirements and a lack of integrated marketing tools.
Small business owners need an easy-to-use, affordable, and efficient online storefront platform that helps them set up an e-commerce presence quickly, manage their store effectively, and promote their products without additional marketing expenses.
Goal
The goal was to create a solution that would make it easy for anyone to set up a professional storefront with minimal effort.
To design a user-friendly, all-in-one e-commerce platform that enables small businesses to:
Quickly set up a professional online storefront.
Easily manage products, orders, and payments.
Built-in no-fee marketing tools to increase visibility without extra costs.
How might we
...enable small business owners, who have minimal technical expertise, to quickly and easily create, manage, and promote their online storefronts, so they can reach a wider audience and grow their sales without feeling overwhelmed by complexity?
Outcome
The launch of eHyped was a success with:
100+ businesses signing up in the first 3 months.
75% active storefronts after the first month.
Adoption Rate: Achieved a 30% week-over-week increase in sign-ups during the first month post-launch, resulting in a 133% overall adoption rate compared to our initial target.
User Feedback: Positive feedback on ease of use, with a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 62, indicating high satisfaction and likelihood to recommend.
Business Impact: Enabled small businesses to establish an online presence quickly, resulting in increased revenue for users.
Increased visibility for small businesses through the no-fee ad feature.
By addressing key user pain points and offering a unique value proposition, eHyped provided an accessible and efficient platform for small businesses to expand their reach and grow their sales.
Design process
Introduction to the product: Project alignment workshop
We kicked off the project with a collaborative brainstorming session to align on the product idea, goals, and success metrics. The outcome of this workshop was a shared understanding of what we were building and why.
Discovery phase: Understanding the Needs of the End-Users
At the beginning of the project, we set out to understand the unique challenges faced by small business owners who wanted to establish an online presence but lacked the technical expertise or resources to build a fully functional e-commerce store. Through interviews and surveys, we gathered insights from local entrepreneurs, small retail businesses, and home-based sellers.
Key questions we aimed to answer during this phase included:
How do business owners currently sell their products?
What are their primary pain points in managing an online store?
What features do they value most in an e-commerce platform?
Findings/Research Insights:
We discovered that most business owners had limited time, technical know-how, and budgets to set up an online storefront, and they needed a simple, ready-to-use platform that required minimal setup and maintenance.
Activities:
Stakeholder Interviews: We met with key stakeholders, including small business owners, to understand their challenges and goals.
User Surveys: We conducted surveys with a broader audience to validate the findings from the interviews.
Contextual Inquiry: Observed how business owners currently manage their online presence and interact with existing platforms.
Research and Findings
We conducted 10 in-depth user interviews and analyzed responses from 30 survey participants. Our research highlighted the following key insights:
Simplicity is key: Business owners wanted an intuitive, easy-to-navigate dashboard.
Analytics are crucial: Many business owners wanted clear insights into their sales performance, customer behavior, and website traffic.
Marketing is a pain point: Most participants struggled with advertising and social media marketing. They expressed interest in a feature that could help them link their social accounts easily.
Payment flexibility: A seamless payment process was a high priority, including clear payment summaries and transaction histories.
Customization: Users wanted to customize the look and feel of their storefront to reflect their brand.
Findings
Summary of insights from 10 in-depth interviews revealed:
65%
Many business owners lacked deep technical knowledge and found existing platforms too complex.
80
Customization and branding were important, but they didn’t want to spend hours setting things up.
70
Managing products, orders, and payments in one place was a top priority.
88
Marketing and driving traffic to their stores was a common challenge.
Competitive analysis: shopify, wix, squarespace,
I analyzed several existing platforms, including Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace to identify gaps in user experience and feature offerings and opportunity for differentiation and improvement with e-hyped. This analysis was also important in understanding what are some things that currently work for small, medium businesses who sell online.
Findings
Existing platforms offered robust features but were overwhelming for non-tech-savvy users.
Business owners wanted simple compliance flows to ensure legitimacy but didn’t want lengthy verification processes.
Integration with social media for marketing was crucial to help businesses expand their reach.
Key takeaways:
Strengths of Competitors: Robust feature sets, established user base.
Weaknesses of Competitors: Overwhelming complexity for non-tech-savvy users, high costs for advanced features, limited free marketing options.
Opportunity for eHyped: Offer a simpler, more intuitive platform with essential features tailored for small businesses.
Our unique differentiators:
No-fee ads for marketing and easy social media integration.
A simple dashboard with key features tailored for non-technical users.
Affordable, ready-to-use templates.
Project definitions
Constraints
Some of the constraints faced by the team working on this project included:
Time: We had a 6-month timeline to deliver a functional MVP.
Budget: Limited budget for user testing and external research.
Technical Scope: The platform had to support future scalability for more advanced features without complicating the initial user experience.
Collaborating with the internal team
Collaboration was key to the successful delivery of eHyped.
Overcoming challenges together
Scope Creep: During development, new feature requests emerged. To manage this, we worked closely with the PM to prioritize essential features for the MVP and defer non-critical ones to future iterations.
Technical Constraints: The developers provided valuable input on what was feasible within the given timeline. When constraints arose, we collaborated to find alternative solutions without compromising user experience. including its ability to reduce operational costs, attract new customers, or retain existing ones.
Ideate
Based on the insights gathered, we brainstormed several solutions for key areas:
Landing Page: Designed to clearly communicate the value proposition and make it easy for users to sign up.
Dashboard: Structured into clear sections:
Home: Overview of key metrics (sales, orders, revenue trends over time).
Commerce: Manage products, orders, and inventory.
Storefronts: Create storefronts and start selling online.
Payments: View and track payments and transaction history.
Ads: Simple social media linking and ad management.
Settings: Customize templates and store appearance, general account settings.
Wireframes were created to visualize these ideas and gather early feedback from stakeholders.
Success metrics
150 target signups
Number of businesses signing up within the first 3 months.
70%
Percentage of active storefronts after launch.
50 NPS
User satisfaction based on feedback surveys.
Solutioning & Iterating
Solution
Key features implemented
1. Onboarding & Activation Flow:
Developed a step-by-step onboarding flow to simplify the initial setup process.
Added a compliance verification step, after registration with real-time feedback to ensure businesses are registered without creating friction.
2. Dashboard:
Created a visually intuitive dashboard with:
A summary of key metrics such as total sales, orders, and customers.
An interactive graph to visualize sales trends over time.
A table listing recent orders for quick access.
3. Storefronts:
Allows users to create as many storefront businesses and manage from here.
Provides tools to customize storefront templates.
4. Commerce Management:
Designed a comprehensive store management section allowing users to:
Add, edit, and categorize products.
Manage inventory with stock alerts.
View and manage orders with status updates.
Test & Refine
Testing was conducted in two phases:
Internal Testing: We ran usability tests with our internal team to identify major issues.
User Testing: We invited 5 small business owners to test the prototype.
We conducted two rounds of usability testing:
Round 1: Focused on onboarding and product management.
Feedback: Users requested more guidance during product setup.
Action: Added tooltips and an FAQ section.
Round 2: Focused on dashboard usability.
Feedback: Users suggested adding quick actions for frequent tasks.
Action: Introduced a quick-access panel on the dashboard.
Key feedback included:
Positive: Users loved the simplicity of the dashboard and the built-in analytics.
Improvement Areas: The initial activation flow was too long, and users wanted more customization options for product display.
Based on feedback, we refined:
The activation flow to make it accessible even to unregistered businesses.
The product display customization feature by adding preview options before live.
Test mode for storefronts before going live.
Reflection & Learnings
Other projects
MyHealth: patient information portal
Reimagine the patient health learning experience for Canadian patients going through medical procedures through access to personalized information, empowering them as active participants.
XCel Payment App Redesign
Redesigned the XCel mobile app to drive user retention and enhance the user experience, enabling individuals and businesses make international financial transactions across 5 countries.