Reframing a telecom shop into a scalable commerce platform
Role
Company
Timeline
Discovery, Strategy & IA
MENA – Telco e-commerce
2025
Scope of work
Product discovery · UX strategy · Information architecture · Competitor benchmarking · Customer journey mapping · Conversion optimisation · Usability validation
CONTEXT
The client wanted to evolve an established telecom e-commerce site into a broader commerce ecosystem for products and services.
The challenge was that the future proposition was still being defined. We could not simply redesign the existing catalogue because we did not yet know what the platform would need to support in the future.
At the same time, the current experience already had significant usability problems across navigation, product discovery, trust, content hierarchy and the purchase journey.
My role focused on the discovery and UX strategy phase, translating research into a scalable product structure and then into journeys, flows and wireframes.
I was responsible for:
UX audit and current-state analysis,
market and competitor research,
client workshops,
information architecture,
customer journeys,
key product flows,
UX wireframes,
and validation of selected concepts.
The core question became:
How might we create a commerce experience that works for today’s customers while remaining flexible enough to support an expanding product ecosystem?
CHALLENGE
The problem was not only an outdated interface.
The existing experience was fragmented, while customers approached product discovery in very different ways.
Some knew exactly which specifications they wanted. Others relied on familiar brands, bestsellers or social proof. Less technical customers often started with a need or use case rather than a product category.
At the same time, important trust signals such as payment, delivery, seller credibility and support were not consistently integrated into the evaluation process.
There was another constraint: we could not assume that familiar European e-commerce patterns would work unchanged in the regional market.
The platform therefore needed to support:
different levels of customer expertise,
direct and guided discovery,
a growing catalogue,
regional shopping behaviours,
and enough structural flexibility for future expansion.
Success criteria
Rather than defining success as simply producing a new set of screens, we used the discovery work to establish broader design criteria.
The future experience needed to:
make products easier to discover,
support both direct and guided shopping behaviours,
reduce unnecessary cognitive load,
strengthen trust during product evaluation,
accommodate different levels of product knowledge,
establish a scalable information architecture,
and give future teams a research-backed foundation for expanding the platform.
DISCOVERY
Separating tactical problems from strategic ones
I started with an extensive UX audit covering navigation, content hierarchy, product discovery, trust, purchase flows and technical usability issues.
One of the first strategic decisions was to separate findings into two groups:
Immediate fixes
Problems that could be improved without waiting for a wider transformation.
Structural issues
Problems that needed to influence the future information architecture and product strategy.
This allowed the client to address existing friction while we worked on the longer-term platform direction.
Designing for the market, not for assumptions
I then researched regional telecom and commerce platforms, international benchmarks, Baymard patterns, local payment expectations, trust and fulfilment behaviour.
Instead of treating benchmarking as a list of best practices, I structured patterns into:
Adopt — patterns that could transfer directly
Adapt — useful patterns requiring regional adjustment
Avoid — conventions that did not fit the context
This helped move the discussion from “competitors do this” toward “what customer problem does this pattern solve?”
Different customers needed different discovery paths
Research also showed that a single catalogue structure would not work equally well for everyone.
We identified three useful shopping behaviours:
Use-case-led
Customers who knew what they wanted to achieve but not necessarily which specifications they needed.
Brand-led
Customers who reduced complexity through familiar brands, popularity and social proof.
Specification-led
More experienced customers who expected detailed filters, specifications and comparisons.
This became one of the key strategic decisions:
The platform should not force every customer through the same level of complexity.
Key principles from discovery
The research translated into several product principles:
direct search and guided browsing needed to coexist,
detailed specifications should remain available without dominating every experience,
trust information needed to appear throughout product evaluation, not only at checkout,
payment expectations needed to reflect the regional market,
and recommendations should help customers understand suitability, not only expose more technical data.
SOLUTION
Discovery for different levels of confidence
I translated the research into an IA that supported different levels of product knowledge.
High-confidence users: search, filters, specifications, comparison.
Users needing guidance: use cases, brands, bestsellers and guided categories.
Across both journeys, we strengthened trust through clearer seller, payment, delivery, returns and support information.
Progressive disclosure
Rather than removing technical detail, I changed when users encountered it.
Experienced customers could access specifications quickly, while less technical users received more guidance first. The goal was to structure complexity around customer intent and confidence.
From strategy to UX
I translated the strategy into the core desktop and mobile commerce flows, including:
revised IA and sitemap
purchase journeys
search and filtering
product discovery
product details and comparison
recommendations and trust patterns
Validation changed the direction
Testing showed that an initially cleaner homepage felt too sparse. Customers expected more visible products, offers and brands.
We increased product density and reduced the dominance of promotional banners.
OUTCOMES
Because my involvement focused on discovery, strategy and UX definition rather than a fully launched product with long-term production analytics, I would not attribute conversion or revenue metrics to this project.
The concrete outcomes were instead the product foundations delivered to the client.
We delivered
a comprehensive UX audit with severity-based findings,
immediate and longer-term recommendations,
regional market and behavioural research,
a benchmark framework adapted to the local market,
a new information architecture and sitemap,
customer journeys representing three different shopping behaviours,
end-to-end purchase flows,
mobile and desktop UX wireframes,
principles for search, filters and guided discovery,
recommendations covering trust, payments and post-purchase experiences,
and shared research documentation designed to support future phases of the platform.
What changed beyond the interface
The most valuable outcome was not an individual page.
The work gave the client a framework for thinking about the future platform.
Instead of treating the product as a catalogue that needed visual improvement, the project reframed it as a commerce ecosystem that needed:
multiple discovery models,
scalable information architecture,
regional adaptation,
research-backed decision making,
and a shared set of UX principles that could survive future product expansion.
REFLECTION
The project reinforced something that has become central to how I approach complex products:
When the future product is unclear, the first design problem is not the interface. It is structuring the uncertainty.
In this case, that meant separating immediate issues from structural ones, distinguishing regional behaviour from imported conventions, and supporting different levels of customer confidence within one product architecture.
It also changed how I think about information density. Minimal interfaces are not inherently better. In complex commerce products, the goal is not to remove information, but to make the right amount of information available at the right moment.
The broader principle I took forward was:
Do not simplify complex products by removing complexity. Structure it so different users encounter only what they need, when they need it.
