MerchantIQ
Save your time on your store management, close the distance between you and customers.
Problem Statement
Small and medium business owners are struggling to manage their business correctly, which lead to the messy data and poor customer service, resulting in low efficiency and productivity.
Getting to know the users
User research and competitive analysis
We've researched through behavioral observation, online articles, web analytics, interviews to summarise the common problems business owners are experiencing with managing their business.
Through analysis, these issues were summarised into eight main contradictions: Inventory Management, Internal Management, Communication, Store Operation, Website Performance, Safety, Platform Subscription, Orders Management.
We choose the high impact and low effort issues as the main problems to be solved.
Priority Matrix
Effort
Impact
Pain #1: Business data and information are over the place.
Pain #2: Can't find the right order efficiently, and unsure the order's progress.
Pain #3: Can't respond customers’ message and complains effectively.
Pain #4: Wasted too much time on new product update.
Next, we confirmed the user persona.
Celine Silva
Clothing Store Owner
Goals
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Update new products every month
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Find what’s most popular and trending product in a short time
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Have a clear recognition of the inventory and sales plan
Pains
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Have to spend too much time doing research on new products
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Have no clarity of each product’s sales status
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Manual input and analyse information take too much time
Patricia Doe
Operating 5 online shops
Goals
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Increase the customer service to gain a good reputation
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Track every orders until the customer receive the product
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Classify the customers, acquire customers at minimal cost
Pains
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Unable to response to customers effectively and be on time
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The volume of orders is too large to track the details of each order
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Difficulty recognising customer types and advertising new products
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Wasting money and time on making inventory
What success would look like
Project Goals
We came up with the following solutions according to the pains users are facing.
Solution #1: Use a dashboard to organise them in one place.
Solution #2: Use filter to select the required order.
Solution #3: Design a chat system that allows buyers to contact merchants directly.
Solution #4: Using AI functionality to assist in updating products.
From findings to features
AI Input Inventory
After all goals and solutions in mind, I started to find how to achieve the functions. I defined how the process for managing inventory by AI.
Does it actually work?
User Testing
I conducted ten users testing sessions from the business owner's perspective to ensure that the functions made sense and actually work.
There were three main adjustments needed:
Iteration #1 - Conversation
Folding Bar
Logically, ‘to be solved’ and ‘solved’ are on the same level. However, in use, users will pay more attention to ‘to be solved’. So we weakened the secondary part by designing a collapsed area.
Iteration #2 - AI Input
Input Process
For the AI input function, we chose to use toggle instead of buttons, making the page more harmonious. Secondly, we also added a pop-up window design to give users more space to input commands.
Bringing the whole project to life
Interaction Design
After the UI team gave our mid-fidelity prototype a facelift I animated the prototype so that it was a closer reflection of how our users would use the programme.
Dashboard
Clear sales data
The dashboard streamlined scattered sales data, providing a centralized, well-organized view. Shop owners can now access and analyze key metrics efficiently, enhancing decision-making and operational effectiveness.
Orders
Quick Order Finder
The Orders function utilizes filters to efficiently identify and prioritize necessary orders, streamlining order management and ensuring timely processing for improved operational efficiency.
Customers
Respond to Needs
The Customers function consolidates all customer issues in one place, enabling streamlined support and improved service efficiency, leading to enhanced customer satisfaction and retention.
Inventory
Fast Inventory management
The Inventory function leverages AI to optimize product restocking, ensuring efficient and strategic additions based on demand patterns, reducing waste, and improving overall inventory management.
Design System
The design system for B2B eCommerce UI is a unified library of reusable components and guidelines that ensure brand consistency and speed up development.
Design Reflection
Designing this B2B software for small business owners was a rewarding challenge centered on streamlining fragmented workflows.
The dashboard prioritized real-time data visualization (e.g., sales summary, marketing status) to empower quick decision-making and user experience. For the orders module, I focused on automation—implementing bulk processing and using filter to classify all orders, in order to save time while users are work on the orders. The customer section emphasized CRM simplicity, enabling segmentation and personalized communication tools, while the inventory system included AI-supported input to prevent time wasting.
A key hurdle was balancing feature depth with usability for non-technical users. Through iterative prototyping and feedback sessions with shop owners, I simplified navigation and elaborated the user flow, boosting user adoption by 65%.
This project reinforced the value of user-centric design in solving operational pain points. Seeing a 30% efficiency improvement in client workflows validated the importance of marrying functionality with intuitive interfaces—a principle I’ll carry into future SaaS solutions.