FIRST UX DESIGNER ONBOARD
Back in 2018, LINE+ plans to scale up and invests more resource for the local markets, where the top four dynamic user bases outside of Japan are located in Taiwan, Tailand and Indonesia (also Hong Kong), while Taiwan particularly, has almost over 90% of the population has LINE App installed and frequently used in their daily usage.
Globally LINE has over 190 million monthly active users and supports 19 languages, which acts as a platform that aims at supporting users’ lives 24/7. LINE App covers many family services such as communication, entertainment, E-commerce and more. To put it simple, LINE is the super App that makes you cannot live without it.
Source : https://line.me/en/
Free messages and voice calls are two of the most dominat features to sell, as well as those adorable stickers that speak to each user’s personality among the circle of friends and families.
But for the local market like Taiwan, as a first UX Designer onboard, I was responsible for several LINE family services targeting at 20M+ users with my brilliant designer teammates along the road. LINE Shopping, one of the primary E-commerce services launched by LINE Taiwan, was under my responsibility to take care of incredibly achieve billions of NT dollars in GMV(Gross Merchandise Value) for the next couple of years.
Go LINE SHOPPING before shopping
Period: July 2018 - November 2020
Role: UX Design Lead
I led the design team of LINE Shopping for the E-commerce platform across (mobile) web and App (iOS & Android) while onboarding. Up untill 2021, I was dedicated into Global EC Shopping service in Taiwan and led efforts to evolve the service to discover new opportunities and experience.Challenge: Product growth
Solution: The all new shopping experience emcomposses key features that focus on better deal that our users love. From price tracking to special offer notification, and in-app browser with discount information. Trustness has been built, while more of people are willing to share and more importantly to earn LINE POINTS for every transaction.
Background
LINE Shopping is the first project I took from the headquarter design office at the first day I join LINE. The service has been focusing on Taiwan market, which inherents little bit different business model compared with other E-commerce players, where people come to our site to choose what to purchase, then they click and jump out to our partner’s page to place an order externally. Once the purchase is complete, LINE POINTS will be earned from 1% to 5% or 10% of the total price of the transaction, based on our partners’ agreement (1 LINE Point = NTD$1).
North Star?
From our analysis, the whole shopping journey can be divided into four steps:
Phase I: window shopping → where people have no idea what to buy; just look around
Phase II: got some item in mind, but not decided yet which brand, price, spec, or style…
Phase III: study and compare the product between providers, and place an order
Phase IV: tracking shipping status
So in the middle of phase I and II, where I put an explosion icon in between, is because from our data and user’s behavior, we found an interesting phenomenon that we want to dig in and explore more.
We found that 65% of click through comes from searching behavior; and those who did use searching and found something they are interested in, they show 16% higher than the average to go to the next page, which is our commerce partner page, and complete the purchase there. So here we have our first assumption for growth, which we want to test it out and scale it.
Ｗe intend to optimize the search function and make it more obvious to users. In other words, we expect users to search whatever they look for and we will do our best to provide them with the best search results.
Redesign search
We redesign our search functionality and highlight the search bar, and also allow users to directly tap on the pre-selected keywords that we provide for them. However, after we finalize the design and put it in front of our users after release, we end up with not too obvious improvement from the metrics.
So we come back to our product vision and goal, and roll our sleeves to have our first big flip over ever.
From our redesign efforts, we did let our users experience our very core value, while once you found the product you like, and compare the price back and forth, you are very likely to get the better deal than you do on the other E-commerce platforms.
However, what and when our users might go to the search route might be different than we expect. There were over 30M+ commodities on our site, and if we really want our users shorten the period of time for searching and completing the order, we had better think more broadly from the product ecosystem point of view and make it clear to all our audience.
Ecosystem that matters
From there we decide to think big: to integrate all services we proudly got at hand into this one big and unique platform of LINE Shopping, which would literally support many facets in your daily lives, a place where you can buy foods, flight tickets or book hotel and travel experience; even send gift, or buy online courses, all in this great pool of over 30M+ products that are available on LINE Shopping.
Before diving in, we analyze tens of well-known E-commerce landing pages that most users firstly see when landing. Each one of these designs are from our potential competitors where they provide distinguished value for their users. As an E-commerce aggregation platform like us, what sets us apart from other players is that we got many brands and stores in one place, as well as big shopping malls and convenient services, and on each one of these shopping transaction, users would earn LINE POINTS back to their pockets additionally.
Competitive Analysis
Theoretical research & micro-interaction
Core value, ASAP
Meanwhile also from our observation, we found that our users usually check their order records to make sure they earn LINE POINTS literally, where the number is so high as 91% increase of CTR for discount tab in My page.
Because this is one of the strong incentives for our users, and it differentiates ourselves from our competitors, so in our site during the user flow, we bundle price comparison and points reward very closely, and put it up front at step two, to let users catch our core value asap.
Design strategy
This All-in-1 EC platform, if you will call it, is a huge topic in my team and also for our E-commerce department among stakeholders. So we host couple of workshops to make sure we align with each other about the feature, the goal, and the outcome, and also to ensure that we are on the right track for our users needs.
Our design strategy to highlight in here for this all-in-1 service revamp:
1) Present all the channels we have with LINE POINTS reward
2) The recommended stores and the brands showcase above the fold, and
3) Personalized product stream offered just for you
Design test
One of our critical phases during design exploration is what we call “design test“. For each part of the modules or elements on the page, we conduct tens of rounds of design ideation and critique, before delivering the final design that we all agree upon to launch. We carefully go through a pretty solid process to make final decision, which is supposed to be ready for the follow-up usabilty test and validation testing in the product development.
Below I demonstrate the design test and ideations for the top channels and recommended stores at the first screen:
Shopping all-in-1
After many rounds of tweaks and discussion back and forth, we finally and proudly launch our Shopping All-in-1 in July 2020, presented both in our mobile web and mobile app.
In this time of all new Shopping experience, we offer many features illustrated ealier such as price tracking, special offer notification, and in app browser with integrated discount information. We build stronger trust with our users during their shopping journey, and they become our repeated customers and more willing to come back and share with their friends by word of mouth, and earn more LINE PONITS on the go.
Product being launched is not the end; otherwise, it is just a beginning. And we keep our users in mind whenever new version has been released. After the great launch, we go with our UX researcher again, to collect and listen to our users’ feedback carefully.
Feedback from our users
There are some points that users are happy with; and some design that they are not to buy in. For example, the way how we keep our users updated from searching to final confirmation of every order and reward, get many thumbs-up. While about the discount information, somehow it is still little bit not easy to understand for our first time buyer, which is limited by our special business model and flow. It is also the hard lesson we learned.
Conducting user interview is like our second natire and become one of our musts to collect user’s voice whenever we release our new features. But it depends on the scale of each release; sometimes we have long and in-depth research, and sometimes we conduct agile-way of user inquiry.
Back to initial goal
Every year during the middle of November, Double 11 Campaign is like the ultimate test of the year to show if we pass or not, in terms of the GMV we make in a year. At the end of 2020, we hand in strong results in the fourth quarter, and up until now, we’re already standing at almost USD$1B in GMV a year (Gross Merchandise Value, the total value of merchandise sold in a year). From a small player like us, it’s a very challenging but also astonishing accomplishment we as a team to finally achieve.
Proudly share some numbers here: 2% increase in total buyers; 77% increase in GMV for our top 30 partners; and 1M App downloads within only six months at the end of 2020.
Back to our initial goal that we set for the product, our shopping team has made it to revamp the design, establish the foundation of the development infrastructure with the team, and also build a bright and solid trustness on this E-commerce platform between our partners, users and LINE Shopping team.
