Systemized shipping labels

Built shipping labels experiences where international sellers can print shipping labels at home cheaper, in a systemic way that will enable future carrier integration faster and easier.

Company

Etsy, Shipping team

Year

2018

Role

Lead product designer, UX,UI

The team of 1 Product Manager, 5 Engineers, 1 Engineering Manager, 2 Business Leads.

Challenge

Individual Etsy sellers ship their items from the local post office, often with their national shipping carriers from nearly every country in the world. Print at home shipping label experience is not only cheaper but also reduces time spent in the line at the post office. It was a popular feature among US sellers and took a big part of Etsy’s revenue. We were planning to expand this service to international markets.

Approach

Through research, I learned that sellers have to repeat the same process to ship each order. To reduce tedious work for them, I focused on optimizing for printing labels in bulk, Auto-filling shipping information, and presetting print options. As we were planning to introduce shipping label service to as many countries in the future, I wanted to make it easy and fast to implement for engineers. Each carrier had its unique requirements, and there also were universal elements across all carriers. I designed each part in modules so that engineers can only focus on new unique pieces while all the universal part can come free with new integration.

Outcome

  • Creating a systematic framework reduced development time to introduce new shipping carrier from 6 months to 1 month.
  • We first launched to UK market with their national carrier and saw a solid onboardings and shipping label purchases.
  • Easier maintenance. If we update features for one market, it will also be applied to other markets because we shared the same code components.
Live capture of shipping label purchase experience
Shipping label purchase page was easier to purhcase labels in bulk
Made clear how much sellers are paying, and made it easy to set up default settings
Using empty states to describe benefits of using shipping labels for sellers with no orders
Module for delivery service
Components of shipping label purchase module

Design process

I started by sending survey to UK sellers to understand local specif needs, and followed with qualitative research sessions. It was great to see user research informing business leads to choose which carrier to partner with. Based on research findings and data we have from US market, I created bunch of wireframes and iterated. We ran a beta testing group for few weeks, and ramped up the product after reflecting user feedback.
Design principle
  • Create a systemetic user experience that can work across multiple carriers. Separate unserveratl experience between carrier specific requirements
  • Create modules that is flexible for futuer updates
  • Make primary informatino(price, ship to address) clear and transparent
  • Automate actions that sellers do repetitively
Tools used

Google slide, HTML/CSS, Sketch

Early wireframes
Form explorations

My takeaways

  • Sometimes it's better to use familiar pattern that alraedy exist in local market. I tried improved how the inputs work, but many sellers were more confused because forms were different from what they're used to.
  • Start with the small market, and bring learnings back to all the other markets.
  • The survey was excellent to get locale-specific information.