DECEMBER 2022

Unifying the Shopping Experience

THE PROJECT

Introduction

In December 2022, we aimed to address legacy design issues and improve the user experience for LeafLink’s retailers. The focus was on integrating payments and logistics feature into a seamless end-to-end journey for retailers, enhancing their ability to manage inventory, orders, and payments efficiently.

LeafLink is a digital platform designed to streamline wholesale cannabis commerce. It connects licensed cannabis brands (sellers) and retailers (buyers) to facilitate order management, payments, logistics, and brand exposure in the cannabis industry.
Cannabis retailers, aka dispensaries, purchase cannabis products to sell to consumers. LeafLink supports them by providing a centralized platform to discover new brands, place orders, track deliveries, and manage payments, simplifying the purchasing process and improving operational efficiency.
Cannabis brands focus on making a variety of cannabis products, including flower, vapes, edibles, and accessories. LeafLink helps these brands by offering a marketplace for wholesale sales. This increases their visibility and helps them manage orders, track payments, and gather important insights. These insights are vital for improving sales and marketing strategies, contributing to their success in the competitive cannabis market.

Problem statement

LeafLink’s Payments and Logistics business lines currently function as separate entities, with limited integration and user-friendly experiences. Specific challenges include:

Context switching between Payments and Marketplace through a top-side navigation.
Logistics features being dependent on third-party vendors and apps.
A cluttered side navigation menu with redundant and overwhelming options.
Inefficient shopping and ordering experiences that limit product discovery and browsing capabilities.

My role & partnership

As the Product Designer, I focused on aligning user-centered designs with strategic product and company objectives. Collaborating with the Product Manager, we aimed to understand user needs, market trends, and business goals to define the product roadmap and prioritize valuable features. My role included engaging with cross-functional teams to gather feedback, validate designs, and ensure feasibility with developers, aligning messaging with marketing, and understanding user pain points with customer support. This collaboration allowed us to iterate and refine designs, creating a product that met user needs while supporting organizational goals.

DESIGN PROCESS

Ideation

The ideation phase involved brainstorming solutions to address the identified challenges and gaps. I conceptualized ideas to consolidate the Payments, Logistics, and Marketplace functionalities into a unified interface. Low-fidelity wireframes were created to visualize a simplified side navigation layout and an enhanced shopping interface. Workflow maps were also developed to streamline demand planning and the ordering process.

Final deliverables

H1 2023

Demand Planning | Dashboard

Quick access for reordering products & links out to the new Order recommendations page.

Demand Planning | Order Recommendations

In place of the Buy it Again feature we allow buyers to see their real-time store inventory + other metrics and reorder based on what they know they need or by referencing our suggested order amount

Ordering - Cart

For the cart, I added preferred delivery date/time selections (these previously did not exist). Revamped the payment method section with the option to select specific terms & see the associated fees that come with using LeafLink’s Flexible Payments* offering.

*Flexible Payments is LeafLink’s version of ‘Buy now, Pay later’. Sellers set their net terms and payment method defaults (i.e. term: net 30, payment method: ACH). Retailers can then receive an advance from LeafLink to pay for products for a small percentage-based fee.

H2 2023

A crowded side nav

Currently, the side nav has 10 menu items forcing the user to constantly have to switch between pages with a hard refresh every time. The goal is to consolidate them into 6. The payments and deliveries features will move to the orders tab. Discover products, Buy it Again, Shop Brands, and Shop Products will be consolidated under the shop tab.

Disjointed shopping experience

Too Many Options
Discover Products, Shop Brands, and Shop Products are overwhelming and offer no discovery paths or categories to explore.

Static Results
Shop Brands and Shop Products results are too literal and inhibit product discovery.

Non-existent Browsing
The customer must use filters in order to find what they’re looking for. Not great for casual browsing or finding new products to buy.

The solution - a new unified shopping experience

One-stop-shop
Combined the Shop Brands, Shop Products, and Buy it Again pages into one shopping experience with exposed filters for a more streamlined ordering experience.

Vendor discoverability
Added quick options at the top to encourage discovery.

A true marketplace
Took inspiration from various other marketplaces to give the users a more familiar shopping experience.

Quicker ordering options
Added the option to quick-add products without having to go through several clicks.