Promotion Event System

 
 

Design a promo event management system to digitize low-efficiency offline processes

From 0 to 1, I designed a Promotion Event System that includes a mobile experience for merchant participation and a desktop experience for the ShopeeFood Operation team to manage promotion progress, showcasing comprehensive expertise in independently completing a complex design.

Mobile App & Desktop Design, Jun - Oct 2022

 
 
 

Part 1 

Status Quo


 
 
 

Current Situation

ShopeeFood promotion event

ShopeeFood holds major promotional events on significant dates, such as New Year, local festivals, and more. The main content of these events involves co-funding with merchants to subsidize ShopeeFood buyers in the form of vouchers, attracting buyers to place orders on the platform.

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Increasingly significant problems

Before the features went online, promotional events planning and managing work in markets like Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia were conducted entirely offline, including document management, merchant communication, and more. This process consumed a significant amount of human resources/time and could not keep up with the rapidly growing business demands.

 
 
 
 
 
 

A Typical Process of a Promotion Event

Preparations for the event may take several weeks, including planning timelines, controlling budgets, and recruiting merchants through ShopeeFood Biz Contacts. Merchants usually join 1 to 2 weeks before the event starts. Once it begins, buyers can see vouchers and discounts from participating merchants on the ShopeeFood app.

 
 

Roles & Their Painpoints in the Promotion Event Season

 

The recruitment process for promotion events is time-consuming and labor-intensive, creating pain points for many stakeholders. Challenges stem from complex paperwork and tedious communication. ShopeeFood’s limited digital management capabilities force stakeholders to spend more time and energy to achieve their goals.

 
 
 
 
Opportunity Statement 

It’s necessary to shift offline management processes to an online platform

There is a need to develop a system that enables the Operations (Ops) team to create and manage events online, allowing merchants to join and manage the events independently.

 
 
 

Design tasks

After the direction was confirmed, we discussed it across teams to ensure that all stakeholders were on the same page regarding the design team’s scope.

 
 
 
 
 

Part 2

Scenario Analysis


 
 
 
 

Gathering Information

Campaigns have been running in real businesses for a long time. To gain a comprehensive understanding of how these promotion events operate, we conducted various rounds of research, including interviews, desktop research, and field research conducted by some of our PMs. This has provided us with ample material to guide the design.

 

Learn about the Promo Terms

 

Promotional Events

ShopeeFood regularly hosts promotional events and recruits merchants to offer discounts to their buyers. Merchants participating in these events can enable buyers to see and apply discounts in their stores. Usually, the discounts that buyers enjoy are funded by the ShopeeFood business and the participating merchants (co-funding policy).

Promotion Packages

Merchants looking to join promotional events must select a package set by the business team. Packages typically include in-app promotions like vouchers and ads, as well as out-of-app activities such as social media and offline marketing. Merchants can choose from different tiers based on their budgets.

Voucher and Co-funding Policy

Vouchers are a common discount for buyers, allowing them to apply discounts to their orders. The discount amounts are set by ShopeeFood. With the co-funding policy, for example, if buyers enjoy a $2 discount on their order and the co-funding policy is 50% by the merchants, then the merchants need to pay $1.

 
 
 
 

Learn about the use case

After discussing with our Ops team and interviewing merchants by walking through their daily operations, we were able to prioritize some features we need to offer for their daily management.

 

For the ops team: their primary need on the internal platform is creating and managing events, as well as managing merchant participation.

For the merchants: their primary need on the Partner App is self-joining events, managing their own participation, and tracking event progress.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Overall interaction flow of the event process on 2 platforms

 

The product design includes the interaction of two platforms, and the entire system requires a clear and organized flow to run the event productively.

The event running period is divided into two main phases within the system: the registration period and the event running period.

 

Registration: The ops team can create events and send invitations to merchants, controlling the event’s running process. Merchants can decide whether to join. The backend will store all the records.

Event Running: The ops team can manage the event progress, while merchants can manage their own participation. Event-related data will be archived after the events end.

 
 

 
 
 
 

Part 3

Merchants Deep Dive


 
 
 

Understand ShopeeFoods’ merchant types

 

ENT

ENT (Enterprises) typically refers to global giant food merchants that operate in Southeast Asia and join the ShopeeFood platform to provide food delivery services. Popular ENT merchants on ShopeeFood include McDonald’s, Starbucks, KFC, and others

SMB

SMB (Small and Medium-Sized Businesses) are local restaurants, cafes, and food vendors. They are the majority of shopeeFood mechants, they play a significant role in contributing shopeeFood’s orders.

SSMB

SSMB (Scaled Small and Medium Businesses) in ShopeeFood refers to SMBs that have multiple branches or franchises operating in one city or across cities. SSMBs are larger than traditional SMBs but not quite at the level of large enterprises.

 
 
 

SMB & SSMB are our design focus

The majority of merchants are SSMB and SMB.

In Indonesia, as well as in Thailand and Malaysia, SSMB and SMBs make up the largest proportion of merchants and contribute the most to ShoeFood’s gross and net orders. And they are the major Partner App users.

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ENTs are served with more care by local teams than SMBs.

Since many ENTs bring traffic for the business, the Local Business Team focuses on retaining them. Some ENTs, especially global food franchises, have their own APIs or customized services for promotions provided by ShopeeFood, while most SMBs rely on their own efforts to operate on the Partner App.

 
 
 
 

Key merchant insights

By gathering data from multiple sources, including Data Analysists, Back-end Dev team’s Data, and our Local Business Team’s assistance, we were able to define key insights about our merchants. The data shown below is calculated based on the range of July to August 2022.

 
 
 
 

82.4K

Long-Tail and Quality Merchants

We identify the merchants to focus on in our design. These are quality merchants: they are qualified as active merchants (having at least 3 orders per week in the past 30 days) and promotion-offering merchants (providing at least 1 type of promotion in their store). These types of merchants are also considered long-tail merchants, contributing to the majority of ShopeeFood GMVs.

 
 

34.1%

Active Merchants in events

Merchants who have participated in Promotion Events, most of them participated regularly.

 

65.9%

Potential Merchants for events

Merchants who have not yet participated in Promotion Events, but have a basic understanding of store marketing.

 
 

Key attributes of our target merchants

What are these 82K long-tail and quality merchants like?

 
 
 
 

Part 4

Refine Design Strategies


 
 
 

Key Statement 01

Merchant UX in the registration period is the most crucial

Most touchpoints for decision making: Merchants need to understand the event’s arrangements and details in order to make informed decisions before they join the events.

Most impactful for business growth: Unclear information and a complicated joining process could lead to low participation, resulting in lost orders from buyers due to unattractive promotions offered by the store.

 

Key Statement 02

Attractiveness, clarity and simplicity are design opportunities

 

The event participation process is divided into 5 stages, with the browsing and confirmation stages being the most critical. By mapping the key information and actions at each stage, we believe that attractiveness, clarity and simplicity are design opportunities

 
 
 
 
 

Key Statement 03

Unfamiliarity and limited info can block Potential Merchants

We analyzed the blockers preventing two types of merchants from moving from the 'browsing stage' to the 'confirmation stage.' Active Merchants may face obstacles due to complex steps, while Potential Merchants might hesitate to join if the information provided doesn't address their questions about the promotion.

 
 
 

Key Statement 04

Design should prioritize efficiency and info clarity

Based on the interview materials, we explored the real situations of different merchants and found that they may have slightly different design focuses. Active merchants seek greater efficiency, as participating in events is routine for them. Potential Merchants rely heavily on whether the event's introduction is sufficient to build their trust to join.

 
 
 
 
 

Design Hypothesis

2 flows tailored for different types of merchants can address their distinct needs?

We proposed two hypotheses based on our analysis and addressed the needs of different merchants in the design. Additionally, we considered using data indicators to evaluate the validity of the hypotheses after the design was launched.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Design Approach 01

Separated Flows for Merchants

Based on our hypotheses, we differentiated the flow for different merchants. For Active Merchants who only need key event details and package tiers to make a decision, we encourage them to join directly on the event landing page and confirm the package details in the next step.

For potential merchants who require more information to make their decisions, we provided detailed pathways that allow them to compare different packages on the package details page, choose the most suitable option, and join from there.

 
 
 

Design Approach 02

Distill Information for Event Landing Page

When we first sorted out all the information that merchants needed for participation, we found it to be complex. Through structured organization, we categorized this information into 3 groups: event details, package information, and voucher information.

Next, we prioritized the information and decided to extract the most critical elements from these 3 categories. We displayed them in a great hierarchy at the most primary touchpoints during the merchant registration period — the Event Landing Page.

 
 
 

Part 5

Design Present


 
 
 

Key Pages Interaction & Design for Event Participation

 
 
 

Overall Flow

This flow includes all the touchpoints for merchant participation during the event season. You can view the full flow in Figma (Link). Please note that this flow is for presentation purposes only; we have a complete development file that was delivered to the development team for reference.

 
 
 

Flow 1 Zoom in

Primary Flow - Mostly for Active Merchants

Key information about event details and extracted package information is well-organized on the Event Landing Page. Merchants can change their package selection and join directly from the Event Landing Page, confirming the details for their chosen package in the next step. This flow emphasizes efficient selection.

 
 
 
 
 

Clear Hierarchy

The prioritization of information and actions clarifies the focus of the page: The arrangement of priorities simplifies complex information and actions, making them easier to read and follow. The different sections of the Event Landing Page are organized based on their importance, and the placement of various CTAs reflects their significance, highlighting the information and actions that need to be emphasized.

Prioritization is also considered within each section: For event information and package information, we arranged them by modules and areas to enhance efficiency in how merchants process information, making it easier for them to capture key details.

 
 

The Data Confirmed Some of Our Assumptions

Although the CTR of 38% for the ‘Join’ button is not very high (possibly due to various factors, including merchants' continued lack of interest or budget constraints), the nearly 80% CTR on the confirmation page indicates that for merchants who decide to join, the process we designed and the information we provided effectively address all their questions and ultimately encourage them to commit.

Data Source: Dec 2022 to Feb 2023 for Thailand Merchant’s Participation

 
 
 
 

Flow 2 Zoom in

Sophisticated Flow - Mostly for Potential Merchants

Potential merchants who seek to learn more detailed information about each package can click on multiple entries from the Event Landing Page to access the details of each package and make comparisons for their selection. This flow emphasizes providing clarity and comprehensiveness of information for merchants who are cautious or thoughtful.

 
 
 
 
 

Comprehensive Explanation

Multiple touchpoints are utilized to communicate event rules throughout the entire process. Understanding these rules can be a challenge for many potential merchants. We employ various approaches, such as adding labels, Q&A sections, and more, to provide important information.

Explaining specific terms greatly helps reduce confusion: As some jargon regarding promotions or reconciliation can be difficult to understand. For explanations that may require additional clarification, we offer them in a softer manner. Merchants can always trigger explanations for terms they don’t understand; these informational markers are often used throughout the whole flow.

 
 
 

Data Shows Thoughtful Merchants Indeed Need Detailed Comparison

Although it seems that merchants who click the ‘See More’ button to access Package Details are not very prominent, the data from the Package Details page indicates that there are indeed merchants who need to switch Package Tiers to make careful comparisons (averaging about 5 clicks per user).

Our design effectively supports this type of merchant. They make thoughtful comparisons and ultimately decide to join the event.

 
 
 
 

After the feature has been launched for a while, we tracked the joining data and identified some key figures that validate the design.

 
 

0.3%

Withdrawal Rate After Joining

This indirectly shows that the joining process is clear, because less than 1% of merchants decide to withdraw after joining.

 

12.3%

Indicating that the event is unclear

Only a small percentage of merchants find the events unclear, while 58.8% of merchants withdraw due to insufficient budgets.

 
 
 

ShopeeFood Admin Design

High-efficiency of Event Creation and Management is also Prioritized

I have taken the Operation team’s feedback into account and designed a simple and efficient flow for creating and managing events. The creation flow is divided into four steps, making the process easy to follow.

 
 
 
 

Last but not least…

I followed the design through to the end of the UI review to ensure that it looked perfect from the merchant's perspective. The feature received positive feedback from our merchants, and I also gained some appreciation from my teammates.

 
 
 
 
 

 

Next Project

 

ShopeeFood Delivery Mode

 
 
 

Start a conversation

pingzhudesign@gmail.com

(86) 185-7550-2451

 

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