Explore Convictional’s journey as it pivoted into wholesale compliance and secured commitments from three companies as paying customers.
Background
Recognizing the growth limitations of the dropship platform, Convictional planned to expand into the wholesale domain, where supplier compliance is a significant issue. Non-compliance can result in fines consuming up to 1-5% of suppliers’ margins. With only two months to develop the initial MVP and launch the initial outreach, time was a critical factor.
My Role
Sole Designer
Lead UX research workshop
Product Discovery
Usability research
Define User Flows
Hi-Fi Design
The Problems
Convictional lacked essential knowledge and insights into wholesale compliance. As a company we needed to:
For wholesale compliance
Process & Solution
Stage 1 - Discovery
Objective: Identify relevant customers, understand their needs, and build empathy.
To address these challenges, we started with a discovery phase:
Stage 2 -
Balancing Innovation with User Needs
From our discovery phase, we identified chargeback management as a critical pain point. Chargebacks resulted in financial penalties and involved complex, time-consuming dispute resolution processes.
Initial Chaos
During the initial exploration of compliance solutions, leadership was excited about the automation potential of LLM. However, the process became chaotic due to continuous changes in direction driven more by technical limitations than user-focused problem-solving.
My Approach
I decided to take a step back and refocus on customer pain points and develop MVP mockups for chargeback management, a frequently mentioned issue in customer calls. This approach also targeted the Finance team, providing faster user feedback due to their strong motivation to address this issue.
Then I collaborated with the PM to conduct user calls with potential prospects to validate our assumptions. We iterated on the mockups based on their feedback.
Outcome
Mockups received positive feedback, providing a clear product direction and moving the project forward despite initial chaos.
Established more structure and frequent feedback loops by scheduling weekly calls with design partners to better align with their needs.
Stage 3 - Rapid Development
As chargeback management grew rapidly with new features, UX debts accumulated. Although it was an early-stage MVP, I believed good UX was crucial for the product’s first impression and usability. As we moved to phase two of outreach, I advocated for additional UX improvements:
The final design addressed key needs:
Outcome
By the end of the project, we successfully collaborated with two design partners for product feedback and feature enhancements, securing commitments from three companies preparing to sign contracts as paid customers.
However, by early 2024, the e-team strategically decided to pivot to a new focus area outside of retail, reallocating resources and terminating the chargeback project.
Takeaways
Timing is everything
During our rapid development in Q4, Black Friday slowed our feedback loop as compliance issues were not prioritized. Fortunately, feedback resumed once the sales season slowed down.
A picture speaks a thousand words
While understanding a prototype can improve communication of ideas, immediate customer buy-in with a simple mockup starts generating valuable feedback right away.
Balancing technology with user needs
Looking back, I recognize the importance of balancing technological possibilities with user-focused solutions. Ensuring that the excitement around new technologies doesn’t overshadow user needs is crucial.