Redesigning Netsuite’s e-commerce platform

Netsuite SuiteCommerce Advanced (SCA) is an e-commerce platform connected directly to Netsuite’s core operational business systems—inventory and order management, marketing, customer support and financials—providing a single view of the client’s customers and business.

Because of it’s nature, SCA was a B2B2C solution, meaning that it was used by other companies to sell their products or services to their users.

I was first assigned to fulfill our customer’s basic needs that the platform lacked by designing functionality like invoices, quotations, support cases, and a more robust shopping cart. Secondly, we planned and executed a redesign of the main shopping experience path after identifying serious usability problems.

🤹‍♀️ Challenges

The problem was clear: major visual and interaction inconsistency across the platform, as well as of  usability issues within the critical path (home page, search, details page, cart, checkout).

One of the biggest challenges was that this platform is subject to customizations in order to meet our customers’s specific needs. We needed to be clear on the rationale behind every design decision, set the boundaries for that customization, and communicate that through our work and deliverables.

I was part of a team of 2 designers based in Uruguay, while also working with people in California.

💊 The solution

An incremental redesign of the platform, starting with the critical path in order to provide a smooth shopping experience. At the same time, create tools to improve the effectiveness of customizations and new capabilities.

👩🏻‍🔬 The process

First, we needed to understand the problem, so I was mainly in charge of defining a sort of informal action plan identifying the most visible opportunities, audience, intended outcomes (from a design and business perspective), and possible constraints. I worked on this iteratively, getting insights from the conversations about the project we were having with partners and stakeholders. Although this plan was based on an initial set of hypotheses, it evolved throughout the journey once we started validating them.

Personas

We identified patterns and differences in user’s behaviors, enhancing our initial proto-personas.

One of the biggest opportunities was to turn SCA into a fully responsive e-commerce platform.

As part of the design work, I lead an iterative process of design, peer review, feedback sessions with users, and refinement of prototypes. I planned and executed user research (qualitative & usability tests, remote and in person), sometimes with the research team, communicating the findings through quick reports including actionable items. I was able to quickly fix the designs and learn about our users while doing so, validating our initial proto-personas, scenarios, and hypotheses.

User journey

On the wall

 

Wireframes and prototypes

 

I also facilitated an Experience Attributes workshop in order to help our team define which characteristics we wanted to represent with every design decision, from visuals to interactions, copy to execution.

Experience attributes