Reducing cart abandonment and cost-to-serve through trade terms transparency
Distributors were abandoning orders at checkout because prices, discounts, and delivery rules only appeared at the last step, where a validation check would often block or change the order. They would end up calling a sales agent to place an order instead, adding cost and friction on both sides.
I investigated and discovered the root cause - our backend ran 20+ logistic, pricing and trade rules in a specific sequence, each dependent on the one before it. Together with product and tech stakeholders, we agreed on a trade-off for MVP: bulk validation on the cart, the earliest point where all rules could run without straining our systems, with real-time catalog validation to follow. I built a communication framework to guide designers through each phase, ensuring the experience stayed coherent and the user never felt the technical constraints underneath.
The result: distributors can see blockers and discounts in their cart and fix issues before checkout, reducing the need to call support or fall back to sales agents. The communication framework was adopted by other design teams across the platform.
Project type
Optimise core ordering flow to reduce cost-to-serve
My role
Opportunity framing and end-to-end design
