Scaling a Multi-Market E-Commerce Ecosystem — Customer App, Internal CMS & B2B Seller CRM
“AS Watson Group”
E-COMMERCE, MOBILE/WEB, SAAS, DESIGN SYSTEMS, MULTI-MARKET UX, AI INTEGRATION, USABILITY TESTING, VOICE OF CUSTOMER, DEEP-DIVE, COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
My Role
Product Designer (Ecosystem Strategy, Core App Redesign & Design Systems)
Methodology
High-Level Impact
Competitive audit and user testing backed by 2,144 global customers.
📁 Quick-Scan Overview
Timeline
2024 – 2025
Scope
3-Part Retail Triad (Consumer App, Internal CMS/DAM Portal, B2B Seller CRM)
An end-to-end, data-driven overhaul of A.S. Watson’s multi-market retail ecosystem to bridge the digital gap against regional competitors.
+15% Add-to-Cart (ATC) velocity | -8% checkout leakage | 2 weeks saved on delivery.
Watsons App UX Review
Optimizing information architecture and checkout flows through data-driven user insights.
Scope & Alignment
Defining the target user spectrum and setting strategic research benchmarks.
Methodology & Framework
User interview, cart sorting and user testing.
Discovery
Variant items scattered in PLP, High checkout friction, Overcrowded homepage feed, Hard-sell campaign content.
Analysis & Insights
Transforming raw qualitative data and survey metrics into actionable design decisions.
A.S. Watson was underperforming digitally compared to market leaders (Digital Maturity Score of 76/100 vs. Shopee's 83/100). The goal was to transform this gap into a conversion engine by optimizing the entire retail pipeline
🧗 The Challenge: The Digital Maturity Gap
📐 The Strategy: Diagnosing Gaps Across the Triad
1. The Consumer App
Extreme "scroll fatigue" due to SKU fragmentation (variants scattered as separate cards), a cluttered homepage layout, and high checkout abandonment.
Through competitive auditing and user interviews, we identified three core bottlenecks:
2. The Internal CMS
Global campaign launches were bottlenecked by manual marketing asset translation, tagging, and cropping.
3. The B2B Seller CRM
External sellers lacked self-service product catalog management tools, slowing down inventory velocity.
Data-driven Enhancement
Ensured a consistent visual language and accessibility standards across Asia and Europe.
UX Research
Conducted in-depth user research and translated insights into prioritized UI enhancements.
CRM Platform
Streamlined communication and task management for sellers and selling platforms (Watsons, ParknShop, Fortress).
CMS SaaS
Supported AI-integrated CMS features, including bulk editing and translation tools.
🔀 The Pivot: Balancing Speed with Scalability
🪃 The Curveball
Mid-project, market-ready generative AI APIs emerged, threatening to make our in-house custom build obsolete and blow our engineering budget.
To streamline our app's product display, we originally scoped a custom internal AI tagging engine within our CMS.
🧠 The Decision
I led a rapid shift to third-party API integration, cutting non-value-added development.
💎 The Value
This pivot saved 2 weeks of development and allowed me to reallocate resources to build a tokenized global design system in Figma, establishing UI consistency across the App, CMS, and CRM platforms.
💡 The Solution: A High-Conversion Connected Loop
We executed a 3-step cohesive design rollout:
Step 1: B2C Mobile App Redesign (Conversion Focus)
Designed a streamlined DAM system featuring automated tagging, quick video translation, and template-based bulk editing using our integrated APIs.
Step 2: AI-Enhanced CMS Portal (Operations Focus)
Adaptive Homepage: Replaced static promotional banners with a personalized, behavior-driven feed.
PLP Variant Swatches: Consolidated duplicate SKU listings into unified cards with inline color/size selectors.
Streamlined 2-Step Checkout: Standardized cart hierarchy and grouped payment/delivery inputs into intuitive accordions.
Step 3: B2B Seller CRM Portal (Vendor Focus)
Built a self-service portal empowering external merchants to manage inventory and sales data directly, reducing support overhead.
🚀 Measurable Value Delivered
The strategic redesign systematically upgraded A.S. Watson’s core retail pillars:
📈 +15% Add-to-Cart Velocity: Driven by the instant feedback of the dynamic PLP Variant Swatches.
🛒 -8% Checkout Leakage: Achieved by reducing checkout cognitive load and streamlining inputs.
⏱️ 2 Weeks Saved & Under Budget: Gained through the strategic API pivot in the CMS project workflow
👥 100% Internal Adoption: Full migration of global content teams to the updated, AI-assisted DAM portal.
