Shopify is an e-commerce platform that helps small businesses build an online store and sell online through one streamlined dashboard. Beyond product display and sales, it offers the capacity to craft various web content, from static panes to blog posts and contact forms. With ambitions to establish a presence in China, Shopify aimed to create a user friendly Chinese website. In pursuit of this goal Shopify engaged MADJOR as its partner for localizing the brand platform for the Chinese audience. This collaboration sought to ensure seamless navigation and engagement for Chinese users.

Before kicking off our design work, we conducted a thorough competitor audit to gain a deeper understanding of Shopify's main competitors in the Chinese market (local cross-border SaaS platforms such as Shoppy, Ueeshop). By benchmarking best practices and identifying gaps where competitors are not present, we were able to make informed decisions about UI/UX design, content, and value-added features for Shopify's website in China.

The competitor audit revealed a significant insight about Shopify's target audience -the majority of them are individuals or businesses who are already engaged in international sales, yet they might not fully recognize the potential strength of their own brands. When planning content for Shopify's Chinese website, we hence focus more on encouraging marketplace sellers and existing cross-border sellers to own their brand and customer relationships.

In addition, to keep consistency on Shopify's brand experience, we designed a wireframe that shares the same grid system as Shopify’s global website, and starting from there built up all the basic sections (top navigation, footer, banners, etc.) for main pages and some key go-to actions. Also, we featured Asian/Chinese faces on key visuals to build a bridge between Chinese users and Shopify in a culturally relevant way.

With expertise in brand thinking + Intuitive design, MADJOR aimed to ensure that Shopify’s Chinese customers have a better user experience in the language they speak, in the long run gaining their trust and paving the way for future success in the market.