My Role
My role was to research, produce sketches, wireframes and the visual design for this solution. I worked with 2 developers and 1 product manager to propose these design solutions.
Introduction
I was given the task of ideating and branding a new product to add to our product suit, which would enable our users to upload and manage mobile commerce products.
This mCommerce product would upgrade our current campaign builder and chatbot builder, allowing our users to promote and advertise real products, which app users could then purchase through the app, thanks to our mCommerce SDK solution.
(Please note: This project is still a work in progress).
Approach
We wanted the task of managing and manually creating new products to be as smooth as possible, especially for first-time users. Since we anticipate our users to be uploading hundreds or thousands of products, it was very important for us to provide clear ways to organise product catalogues in a simple and friendly way.
Our application needs to work for a variety of vertical markets - Retail, food, restaurants, airlines, hotels, etc. We need it to be highly customizable. While some sections will be important and useful to some vertical markets, they might not be important to others. Many different use cases need to be considered, to ensure that our solution will work for various possible scenarios. Eg: while a food app might want to offer the ability to deliver and collect food orders, an airline app might want to upsell non-physical products such as car parking and VIP lounge access.
We also felt that instead of creating an eCommerce solution on mobile, the purpose of this solution was to carefully choose what products to upload and promote, rather than the entire catalogue.
Early Sketches of the Updated Navigation
Product Creation & Management
Payment Integrations
We realised that it can be a huge pain for marketing teams to take on yet another integration, especially when dealing with sensitive information such as real customer payment information. Rather than us taking on the huge task of learning how to manage the security of this, we decided that the best solution (for us and for app users) would be to integrate our solution into another payment SDK, such as PayPal's Braintree, while also supporting Apple Pay and Android Pay. We wanted to provide multiple options for users to pay with, rather than forcing them to use Paypal, for example. As this could cause huge friction for users.
We are currently still researching and working on this stage of the project.
Teaching Current Customers About Commerce
Since Commerce is an add-on, existing Pulsate customers can navigate to the new section to learn more about it, before signing up. I wanted to quickly get across the message that Commerce works across any industry, so hopefully different customers can relate to and imagine how Commerce could work for their business. While Commerce is in Beta mode, we can gather emails of interested customers, who can get first access and be notified of its availability.
Commerce Designs (Work in Progress)
Selecting Commerce Items in the Campaign Builder
After products have been added to the Commerce section, they can be selected in the campaign builder to promote these products to enticed app users. I had 2 tasks in this campaign builder update:
- Searching for and selecting specific products
- Selecting multiple product categories, as a way of quickly adding the product cards associated within specific categories
I also had to consider how to display categories of product cards on the canvas. The following sketches show my initial thinking of the adding products modal and also, searching for products and how they might be displayed within their categories.
Sketch Designs for this Update
What I've Learned So Far From This Project
It can be fun to have so much creative freedom when conceptualising something from the ground up. It has the possibility to be anything.
But restrictions are necessary to focus on the problem you're trying to solve and why, so you don't get distracted.
It's also necessary in terms of budget and reaching an achievable timeline.
For this project, I had to stay close to Pulsate's overall mission. This MCommerce project is one of the many puzzle pieces that make up what Pulsate is. Each puzzle piece needs to compliment the other, working together as a solution to build meaningful relationships between businesses and their customers. MCommerce adds a layer on top of this relationship to allow in-app purchasing to be a convenient and easy-to-use experience, appearing at the right moment for mobile app users.
I go into more detail about the app user's side to this update here.
Interested in Working Together?
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