Data analysis
Examined and evaluated the performance of the existing designs and analyzed the types of users who placed orders with us.
Case study 02 · AfriTrade Portal
Access real-time, accurate product data to make informed purchasing decisions.
A digital sales solution enhancing online ordering, order management, and customer experience while supporting and expanding sales channels.
Context
Knowing the unknowns
A business need was identified in the Sub-Saharan Africa Market Access to enhance digital interactions with third-party stakeholders, including customers, clients, and principals.
Without existing insights, I was in uncharted territory, unsure of the product's direction. That's when I decided to plan a research exercise to understand users' workflows, challenges, and expectations. Identifying the right people and asking the right questions is key to gaining real insights.
“Why is this product at the edge of going down?”
Research
Asking the right people the right questions.
User insights
Interviewed a group of 10–15 real users, along with product managers, business owners, and analysts, to identify improvement areas.
Design review
Focused on redesigning UX, visual elements, and structural hierarchy to provide a more intuitive and familiar experience for our users.
The challenge
Balancing business viability, technical feasibility and user desirability.
Redesigning a product for the Sub-Saharan Africa market meant catering to user needs, ensuring scalability, and supporting various Market Access services. Tight timelines and legacy app issues added complexity. Beyond visual updates, the aim was a seamless user experience that met regional and business needs.
Problems in pre-existing designs
Aligning the current e-commerce design system and addressing UX gaps.
Undefined design strategies
The project lacked clear IA, relying on ad hoc adjustments driven by the current ERP solution.
Aggressive timelines
Due to tight timelines, the project prioritized timely design delivery over scalability.
Approach
Audit, scale, align.
UX audit
Conducted a UX audit to align with our e-commerce design system, optimized product listing, and completed checkout behavior for a better user experience.
Scalability
Developed a scalable solution for seamless transitions between desktop and mobile designs, integrating varied data sets across business units effectively.
Communication
Established alignment between business units, product, and tech team in planning walkthroughs and weekly meetings to integrate a seamless user experience.
Workflow
Discover, Understand, Define
- Product requirement & spec
- Why. Problems. Data evidence
- Timeline, scope & roll-out plan
- Business objectives, competitor analysis
- User segment, persona
- User interviews: discover insights and pain points
Brainstorm, Revisit, Hypothesis
- Design workshop: map out all user journeys
- Collaborative design
- Generate hypothesis (PM & designer)
- Value matrix
- Usability testing, get feedback (iterative prototyping)
Develop, Evaluate, Evolve, Iterate
- UX flow (IA, visual, interaction)
- Functional QA
- Experience QA (interaction / visual / UX)
- Desk check and design discrepancy
- Revise design based on development constraints
- Iterate & validate based on qualitative and quantitative analysis
Workshop
Mapping the business before the screens.
Research foundations
Key screens
Optimization
Why did we do this?
Business
To reduce drop-off rates and increase product discoverability while minimizing clicks.
Technology
The previous app design was hard to scale due to accumulated UX and tech debt.
User's pain points
Design wasn't optimized for small screens in the SSA region, leading to information loss and scalability issues.
Audit findings
01
Utilizing real estate, fixed at top
02
Showing deals is not scalable
03
Accessibility issue for selecting the quantity
04
No upfront price details (market price, selling price, deal price)
05
Large product cards
06
Overwhelming way of adding product to the cart
Inefficient space in listing led to clutter, with 45% of users abandoning searches if they were not able to find items within 30 seconds.
Information architecture
IA & component thinking
In terms of design principles, I had to rethink three points:
Scalability
Scalable and stable design structure.
Versatility
Modularised components that can fulfill any scenario and service type.
Consistency
Consistent structure across different service types.
Components
Design
Two experiences, redesigned.
Core Buying Experience
Added a standalone Add To Cart CTA, which increased scalability for the future, reduced the difficulty of use and reduced drop-off rate.
Account Switching Experience
Selected account and added products sit close to each other. Users were happy to view the information upfront and switch account at any given time.
Impact
Successful Adoption
32%Increase in user acquisition
47%Increase in purchase
9.2%Increase in conversion rate
Goal
25% of GMV will flow through AfriTrade Portal ordering by 30 June '26.
Adoption
AfriTrade Portal adoption for May stands at 29% (highest ever).
111Transacting customers
1,767Sessions
871Add to cart
163Purchase
Reflections
Data-driven decisions, clear UX writing, impactful small changes.
Data & user-informed design
Understanding both data and user inputs is crucial for making informed design decisions.
UX writing
Simplify design and communication to build brand trust effectively.
Small change, large impact
Focusing on small, overlooked details with potential for significant positive impact on both business and user.