01

Result

An 18% decline in new stores, reversed in 8 months, during Printify’s busiest season.

An 18% decline in new stores, reversed in 8 months, during Printify’s busiest season.

Role

Sole product designer

Team

PM, 6 developers, Head of Product

Company

Printify · E-commerce, B2B2C

Timeline

7 months, 2025 ·

Visit site

Success screen after setting up a Pop-Up store

Success screen: “Congratulations on setting up your store”

+9%

+9%

New stores created three months after launch, reversing a six-month 18% decline.

91%

91%

Of active merchants completed the new verification process.

0.4%

0.4%

Of Support inquiries were about the redesign.

I also gave the team ownership of the Pop-Up store journey, so it could iterate and run experiments on its own.

02

Problem

Merchants weren’t reaching the value of Pop-Up stores

New store creation had fallen 18% in six months. Most merchants created a store, then sold through other channels. The PM and I read analytics, surveys, support tickets and session recordings to find where the journey broke.

Didn’t understand Pop-Up’s value or how it worked

33%

33%

Couldn’t find how to publish products

24%

24%

Finished onboarding without creating a product

16%

16%

Hit technical issues

11%

11%

Onboarding audit flow diagram

These weren’t isolated usability issues. The flow was fragmented and distracting.

Zoom

Zoom

03

Success

5+

5+

Number of product published by successful merchants.

Verified within 24 hours

Uploaded a logo

Published 5+ products

No one had defined what successful merchants do, so I mapped the actions on the platform and looked for the ones that correlated with sales.

04

Ownership

We had no ownership over our core journey

Digging into session recordings, I found that a rogue modal owned by the onboarding team was redirecting merchants before they could finish setting up their store.

Intrusive modal redirecting merchants during store creation

Nobody had told us it launched, and I was the first to spot it.

I proposed a small Success step at the end of store creation to celebrate the milestone.

It was small enough to get buy-in, and it gave us a screen inside the onboarding team’s flow that we could change and run experiments on ourselves.

Intrusive modal redirecting merchants during store creation

It contributed to +9% new stores, reversing the six-month decline.

The team could now run experiments and fix bugs on the core journey on its own.

Around the same time, Printify was going through a full rebrand.

Product teams had started adopting jobs-to-be-done thinking. Alongside other designers, I explored how these principles could be used.

Store creation step in the new brand

I added a simplified product step to store creation, so new stores launch with a product already published instead of an empty shelf.

Store creation step in the new brand

24% of merchants couldn’t find how to publish products.

I designed the flow to guide merchants through each job, from creating a store to publishing their first product and celebrating that milestone.

Store creation step in the new brand

It contributed to +9% new stores, reversing the six-month decline.

That pattern became the guided flow, adapted for every sales channel.

Store creation step in the new brand

It contributed to +9% new stores, reversing the six-month decline.

With the guided flow working, the next problem came with a deadline.

05

Verification

90

90

Days until your store will be disabled.

Verify your identity

Manage your own taxes

Reconfigure profit margins

Compliance requirements forced Printify to switch payment providers. That meant every merchant had to complete the new verification process, even if they were already verified.

Verification entry point with Stripe statuses

I split the experience by audience: active merchants needed urgency because of the deadline; new merchants needed a calm explanation of the process ahead.

Merchants had 90 days to migrate or be forced to stop selling.

Peak season was close and the biggest risk was that Stripe could flag legitimate merchants with no recourse, putting their businesses at risk overnight.

Merchants never asked for this change, so I took responsibility to make the transition as seamless as possible.

We couldn’t fully control the experience

Verification opened in a new window not inline but I was able to apply our brand typography and colors to make it feel native.

Banner logic mapped in workshops with engineers

We used Stripe’s pre-built components to ship quickly.

Nudging merchants to act

I proposed a proactive communication strategy with persistent banners and modals guiding merchants to verification.

Banner logic mapped in workshops with engineers

Active merchants saw a deadline; new merchants saw a calm walkthrough.

Messaging adapted based how many products they had published: more products meant more encouraging messaging.

Merchants who started but didn’t finish got reminders, and time-triggered modals appeared one month and one week before the deadline.

Banner logic mapped in workshops with engineers

Active merchants saw a deadline; new merchants saw a calm walkthrough.

I ran workshops with engineers to map the logic, structure, and edge cases before pitching it to other teams.

The PM and I got other teams to agree to our team owning banner behavior inside their codebase. That gave us direct control over banner fixes instead of waiting on another team.

Banner logic mapped in workshops with engineers

The banners had to work across every platform surface and different merchant statuses.

I also established an ongoing process with Support and Marketing for help articles and email campaigns.

Disabled stores destroy trust

When a store was disabled, a warning banner appeared at the top. For visitors, that made the store look untrustworthy.

I noticed that if merchants saw traffic to their disabled store, they’d have a reason to complete verification.

Banner logic mapped in workshops with engineers

A disabled store should not be a dead end.

I replaced the warning with an email signup field and a dashboard widget showing visits and emails collected.

06

Rollout

The first release showed what broke

The rollout exposed bugs in the banners, the call to action and the Stripe flow. Fullstory didn’t record inside Stripe, which left the key step invisible.

Of merchants who published a product, started verification

79%

79%

Completed within 48 hours

63%

63%

Abandoned on the first try

32%

32%

After fixes: active merchants completed verification

91%

91%

We shipped to 5% of merchants behind feature flags and reviewed Fullstory sessions weekly.

Banner logic mapped in workshops with engineers

07

Learnings

Good messaging can land better than expected

I knew active merchants wanted to keep selling, but 91% in the first two months beat my expectations.

Ownership was the biggest constraint

When a flow lives across teams, even minor changes become slow and coordination-heavy.

A small step can matter most

The Success step reduced fragmentation and gave merchants a sense of completion.

Arrive with a plan

Workshops with engineers and close PM work let us pitch to other teams with confidence.

Next time I would push to set clear ownership of end-to-end journeys up front, so teams can iterate quickly and answer for the results.

A small step can matter most

The Success step reduced fragmentation and gave merchants a sense of completion.

Good messaging can land better than expected

I knew active merchants wanted to keep selling, but 91% in the first two months beat my expectations.

Ownership was the biggest constraint

When a flow lives across teams, even minor changes become slow and coordination-heavy.

Arrive with a plan

Workshops with engineers and close PM work let us pitch to other teams with confidence.