Selazar is a third-party logistics provider (3PL) helping businesses of all sizes to fulfil online orders for customers. Users reported issues with their E-commerce orders not coming through from Shopify into Selazar for fulfilment.
My role
User research, prototyping, UI design, Product design, Product Strategy, Managed a UX design team of 3
Results
Order stability increased by 60%.
Streamlined customer onboarding process
App featured in the Shopify App Store
Increase in self-serving onboarding
Selazar is a third-party logistics provider (3PL) helping businesses of all sizes to fulfil online orders for customers.
As eCommerce fulfilment specialists, Selazar offers many logistics services to help manage and track inventory from sale to final mile delivery. Fulfilment includes warehouse storage, management & picking and packing items, custom packaging and shipping items through the courier network. Customer logistics can be managed with the cloud-based fulfilment platform.
Shopify orders need to be received and processed as quickly as possible.
Users have reported experiencing issues with orders not coming through from Shopify.
Our Support team has determined in a few occasions the Shopify integration would simply stop sending orders.
My team was tasked with finding a solution to the disconnection issue and the processing of orders.
Early discussions defined a potential new integration method to fetch orders as the initial MVP and needed to be delivered within Q4 2022
In the increasingly competitive world of e-commerce, a seamless and efficient order processing system is vital for both customers and businesses. Selazar was facing challenges with their Shopify integration.
The existing method of continuous polling was causing delays and disruptions in order reception, impacting customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. Continuous polling, also known as API polling, is when a client makes recurring calls to a specific API endpoint.
The calls are typically repeated on a time-based cadence, such as every 10 minutes. The calls are authenticated with Shopify using user credentials, the system polls a store for orders that need fulfilled and pulls down the order information in fixed batches. Uploading the tracking references was possible only after the whole process is complete. There are limitations around batch size, polling and time to update orders.
The pain points were significant. Sixty percent of users and internal support teams reported missing orders and gaps in frequency.
In the increasingly competitive world of e-commerce, a seamless and efficient order processing system is vital for both customers and businesses. Selazar was facing challenges with their Shopify integration.
The existing method of continuous polling was causing delays and disruptions in order reception, impacting customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. Continuous polling, also known as API polling, is when a client makes recurring calls to a specific API endpoint.
The calls are typically repeated on a time-based cadence, such as every 10 minutes. The calls are authenticated with Shopify using user credentials, the system polls a store for orders that need fulfilled and pulls down the order information in fixed batches. Uploading the tracking references was possible only after the whole process is complete. There are limitations around batch size, polling and time to update orders.
Three key opportunities emerged.
This project presented an unusual opportunity. Beyond fixing the integration itself, I could look at the processes it touched and improve them too.
By analysing the payload data coming from Shopify, I was able to cross-reference this project with other workflows that had known pain points. This meant I could potentially improve the user experience of several processes at once.
Onboarding
The onboarding process at Selazar consists of many different touch points, like the inbound of stock to one of our fulfilment centres and the creation of the customer’s product library. The Selazar system requires the creation and maintenance of this product library to commence and continue the fulfilment of orders. Onboarding agents will work with the users to successfully create and record all the products and their mandatory information into the system
Product library consistency
The order processing workflow requires all the products, product variants and their information to match the order source. An order without the correct information cannot be validated and it will be failed by the system
Data consistency
This project presented an unusual opportunity. Beyond fixing the integration itself, I could look at the processes it touched and improve them too.
By analysing the payload data coming from Shopify, I was able to cross-reference this project with other workflows that had known pain points. This meant I could potentially improve the user experience of several processes at once.
To help the team decide if all these ideas should be implemented I used the RICE scoring method & the Kano Model
As we can see from the Kano analysis, new users will be delighted if we implement product sync. On the other hand, users will suffer if their product & order data is not correctly fetched from Shopify, as it becomes a manual process each customer has to perform every time a product changes
The RICE score placed the project firmly in the high-priority category. The combination of high reach (2000 orders monthly) and significant impact meant improving this integration would touch a large volume of customer transactions. The effort of 2.5 person-months was reasonable for the expected uplift in stability and user satisfaction.
Our problem statement was simple, but yet, transformative Selazar lacks an integration method that provides a quick, accurate, stable, secure, comprehensive and predictable two-way communication with Shopify.
The current integration process can be streamlined and expanded through the use of webhooks, for that purpose our team will develop a Selazar Shopify App.
Instead of customers having to create a private app, set permissions, create Selazar as a fulfilment service, and create the integration with administrator credentials within the Selazar portal. The Selazar Shopify App will handle all this processes automatically when installed. Customers will also be enable to synchronise, view and update products, SKUs, and set Selazar as a fulfilment service. This can be done through the Shopify app itself or on the Selazar retailer portal, utilising API calls to Shopify directly as the app will create an API key, once installed for the Selazar backend to use.
Also, by allowing customers to subscribe to ‘product updates’ each time they add a new product or edit a product in their store to be fulfilled by Selazar, the Selazar system will receive this data and update the corresponding product on our side. This can be toggled on and off by the customer. By subscribing to these updates we will also receive images for products once these are added, meaning customers will not have to upload images to the Selazar portal themselves.
Designing the Selazar Shopify App experience whilst streamlining integration and the onboarding funnel
I designed the app installation flow to be a single point of entry, automating permissions, API key generation, and fulfilment setup that previously required manual configuration. For product management, I created parallel interfaces in the Shopify app and Selazar portal where customers can search products, update SKUs, and toggle fulfilment settings.
I also designed a simple toggle for webhook subscriptions, letting customers receive real-time product updates and images automatically. The toggle status persists by checking active webhooks on page load, with clear confirmation messages giving users full control without complexity.
Onboarding: Warehouse selection & Payment details
This is a feature description spanning a couple of lines.
Onboarding: Warehouse selection & Payment details
This is a feature description spanning a couple of lines.
Onboarding: Warehouse selection & Payment details
This is a feature description spanning a couple of lines.
Onboarding: Warehouse selection & Payment details
This is a feature description spanning a couple of lines.