Shaping the Cross-Border Shipping & Shopping

The startup we’ve worked with is servicing their customers effortlessly to shop and ship with the global brands which cannot operate in their home country/region. Their freight forwarding services & warehouses cover the globe sprawling from Asia, Europe, the UK to the USA. They wanted to revamp their responsive website for 10 regions/countries, and also to build native IOS/Android apps with a tight deadline.

In order to get the design right, we sent surveys to hundreds of our customers through Intercom, interviewed with Customer Support who are engaging with customers on a daily basis, and dived into Google analytics/Hotjar. We also scoured popular material themes to find the most adaptable material design that required teams to rethink collaboration when it comes to building a cross-platform product. By gathering all information together has made me realise that how important it is of being communicate effectively across remote teams during pandemic life, and yet, a well-defined design system as we forge ahead.

Design brief

Problems

• 50% of transactions dropped due to the complex shipping process. For existing customers, they have lived a bit dysfunctional website for a while, for example, lost the track of their parcel, don’t know when/how/where to declare parcel.
• A steep learning curve for the new customers, for example, ambiguity between consolidation & order in their website.
• Lacking of app supported. Learning to decalre the shipment can sound intimidating. For existing customers, they only can declare, consolidate and track their parcels though website. Not only the notification does not arrive timely but the declaration form usually takes them up to 15 minutes or more before submitting.
• Forms are not easy to fill out and aren’t auto-filled

Hypotheses

Our hypotheses were that if apps & revamped website successfully launched, we’d assume that:

• An increased existing customers who’d tend to use mobile more than desktop ( a data has indicated mobile usage was relatively higher than desktop as it was in GA)
• Take less time to fill the forms, such as declaration or consolidation
• A lower bounce rates on form completion
• A self-explanatory declaration & consolidation flow would make customers feel easier to use this application, rather than scratching their heads on learning terminologies.

UI/Experience solutions

We’ve been working on this website revamping & app for 10-12 months, and has rolled out MVP in 2021. It does feel impossible while looked back the tight deadline as we were being given. More impotently, we’re glad that answered the satisfaction to our client. Besides, the UI style guide I’ve created benefits CTO/CEO that they can easily & effectively communicate with their PM/PO or other team members which have a little knowledge on design and developments, but yet they now speak one UI language. At next phase, we’ve received a lot of requests regarding social e-commerce that could attract more content sharing. Eventually, cross-border shipping should be as easy as domestic.

And here is what we concluded for the final design solution:

• Simplified declaration & consolidation process with a clear form design that prevents customers from learning difficult shipping terminologies, increasing the speed by auto-fill and clarification with real-time error validations.
• Easy & desirable app design streamlined shipping/shopping experience by restructuring the work flows, for example, made customers feel easier to track where their parcels are at, and also always being notified timely when there’s an action required.
• Guiding internal (stakeholders) & external customers speak one UI language through a well-defined style guide, which saving the developing time and yet expediting the time to market.