Case Study
Role: Lead UX Designer
Goal: Integrate with Shopify to streamline fulfillment and provide flexible shipping methods for jewelers
Team: UX, Marketing, Engineering, Product, Legal, Copy
Challenge
Our jewelers using Shopify faced a disjointed and manual process for handling fulfillment on shipping and insurance for jewelry purchased by their customers. This led to significant operational inefficiencies, increased risk of errors, and a time-consuming workflow for our partners.
User Needs (Jeweler)
Direct integration into Shopify workflow.
Reduced manual data entry for shipping insurance.
Clear and easy configuration of shipping defaults and methods.
Automated syncing of order data for label generation.
Business Needs JM Shipping Solution
Expand market reach by integrating with Shopify.
Enhance satisfaction and retention of jeweler partners.
Offer a modern, competitive, and scalable solution.
Solution
We embedded the JM® Shipping Solution directly into Shopify ecosystem through a custom app—empowering jewelers with an error-resistant workflow for configuring shipment methods, managing shipping insurance and streamlining fufillment. This integration wasn’t just functional—it was a strategic alignment of business goals and user needs, delivering a seamless experience where operational efficiency meets peace of mind.
The streamlined workflow enabled by the JM® Shipping Solution plugin.
My Process
To kick off this project, I held several meetings with product, sales, and engineering to understand technical constraints, business goals, and gather any insight from existing customers.
The integration involved multiple technical layers—including three distinct carrier APIs, Shopify store-specific requirements, and maintaining harmony between our 2 systems: JM Shipping solution and the legacy system that powered it.
Understanding these constraints was critical to designing a solution that was both feasible and scalable.
Research and Discovery
I set off to usertesting.com to screen for jewelers to recruit for qualitative insights. However, recruiting jewelers proved difficult, as our user testing platform did not have this demographic readily available within our project's tight timeline
In order to ensure we were able to get some user feedback, I reached out to sales and account managers to see if we would be able to get any clients to join us for a quick call on their workflow to help make a better solution. Sales was able to reach out to a client of our platform and they agreed to hop on a call with us.
Most impactful insights I gathered:
Jewelers were using Shopify, Monday.com and JM Shipping solution all separately to handle shipping methods, fulfillment, and insurance.
A disjointed and context-switching workflow that wasted precious time. Due to manual process, there were often times mistakes made when filling out the shipping details.
Design
Once I understood the technical constraints and gained some insight into the jeweler workflow, I set off to design the screens needed for the JM Shipping solution plugin within the Zing marketplace.
To ensure visual and functional consistency, I leveraged the Zing design system to build the UI in alignment with established brand standards. In parallel, I proactively designed and documented new components to expand the system’s capabilities, anticipating future integration needs and supporting long-term scalability.
JM Shipping Solution plugin where jewelers configure shipment methods that were used to provide live quoting for their customers at checkout and automate label generation to boost efficiency in their fulfillment workflow.
Users can configure shipment methods through a wizard-style flow.
JM Shipping solution dashboard where jewelers can view/manage shipments.
Final Words
This project had many constraints, largely technical, that were difficult to navigate. We had an authenticated shipping platform that was powered by a legacy system, insurance-based constraints on shipment value and 3 different carrier API’s. Thankfully, I was part of a great team and we worked non-stop together on this integration to get any and all issues resolved. I was so excited to launch this plugin and save our jewelers precious time and streamline their workflow.