shops
by SundayPyjamas

shops
by SundayPyjamas

A DIY Platform to launch, manage and
operate e-commerce stores

A DIY Platform to launch, manage and operate e-commerce stores without coding

Services

Research, Ideation, UI/UX, Visual design, User testing

Timeline

6 Months

Dec 2020 to May 2021

Team

Prathamesh Patel, Nishi Panchal, Sagar Agrawal, Bhavin Patel

Tools

Figma, JIRA, Miro, Bubble.io, Photoshop, Notion

  • The Problem

In December 2020, following the pandemic outbreak, buying essential goods from neighborhood stores turned into a challenging endeavor. This situation brought about difficulties for both consumers and shopkeepers. Owners of smaller establishments faced difficulties selling their merchandise, as buyers were reluctant to step inside their stores.

In the absence of any tools, business operators were struggling to facilitate their customers.

Tool Stack

  • Challenge

How can we make accepting and fulfilling orders easy for store owners, so that they can operate and grow safely?

How can we make accepting and fulfilling orders easy for store owners, so that they can operate and grow safely?

  • The Solution

Shops by SundayPyjamas - a DIY e-commerce platform that enables anyone to launch a digital store in less than 15 minutes. Key features include:

- storefronts with rich product display
- WhatsApp integration
- inventory management
- marketing tools to promote the store using a URL
- order placement and tracking
- delivery management system

  • Operational Challenges

Product Management: Large SKU count, products without standardized SKUs, and difficulty in maintaining accurate product databases.

Technology Adoption: Varying levels of technology adoption among local stores, impacting integration and efficiency.

Logistics: Limited delivery capacity of grocery stores, and decisions on delivery or pickup options.

Inventory Management: Challenges in tracking inventory for thousands of products across multiple stores.

Payment Systems: Balancing cash and digital payments, considering the prevalent trust-based lending culture in local shops.

  • Phase 01

Research and Ideation: learning more about the problem space and empathizing with our users

Research and Ideation: learning more about the problem space and empathizing with our users

  • User Interviews

To identify the problem, we chose to talk to business owners as well as shoppers. For the same, we went to 5 localities in Ahmedabad and conducted 30+ discovery interviews.

At the time, we primarily focused on understanding how operators manage their inventory, how they are interacting with their customers online majorly on WhatsApp, what are their major concerns when running their stores and managing their inventory.

Some of the insights we gathered from the discovery interviews are showcased below:

  • Phase 02

Ideating & developing: Translating research into tangible solutions and userflows

Ideating & developing: Translating research into tangible solutions and userflows

  • User Flows

We focused on two user flows:
1. Business owner user flow
2. Shopper user flow

This enabled our team to further gain insights into the individual features that needed to be built in order to build effective solution to solve customer problems.

  • Our Design Process

We used an iterative design process that enabled us to integrate insights that we learnt while conducting product discovery sessions.

  • Wireframing

User flows guided the creation of wireframe sketches for both user and partner-facing platforms.

  • Prototyping

Leveraging the previous user flows and inisights from the customer interviews, we design high fidelity prototypes to craft a tangible product.

  • Development

Prioritizing Rapid Development and Customization: We opted for Bubble.io as our front-end development platform due to its unique advantages.

Seamless Backend Integration: Bubble.io streamlines the process of setting up the backend infrastructure, allowing us to focus on building the core functionality of the application.

Rapid Prototyping and Deployment: Bubble.io's visual development environment facilitates rapid prototyping and iteration. This approach allows us to gather user feedback early and continuously iterate on the design to ensure a user-friendly experience.

Customization Flexibility: While it doesn't require traditional coding, it provides enough flexibility to customize the user interface and functionalities to meet our specific needs. This allows us to create a unique and user-friendly experience that aligns with our brand identity.

  • Key Challenges

Dynamic Product Data: Managing unique product databases for each store with constantly fluctuating product details (availability, pricing, options, descriptions) proved to be a significant hurdle.

Scalability: The process of manually adding hundreds of products per store was inefficient and time-consuming.

  • Solution

To address these challenges, we implemented a centralized, branded product master database accessible through an API. This approach enables shop owners to efficiently add products to their online stores by selecting from a pre-populated list, ensuring data consistency and reducing manual input.

  • Phase 03

Testing the product with real customers and iterating with real world data

Testing the product with real customers and iterating with real world data

What People Say

"We're all about serving up delicious food. The pandemic made us realize how much people needed us, so we're stoked about anything that makes things easier for our customers. This platform is awesome! Thanks for helping us out."

Mahesh Sindhal

Ashok Pan House

Pradeep Vala

Kamala's Cafe

Rahul Rajput

Bnuts

What People Say

"We're all about serving up delicious food. The pandemic made us realize how much people needed us, so we're stoked about anything that makes things easier for our customers. This platform is awesome! Thanks for helping us out."

Pradeep Vala

Kamala's Cafe

What People Say

"We're all about serving up delicious food. The pandemic made us realize how much people needed us, so we're stoked about anything that makes things easier for our customers. This platform is awesome! Thanks for helping us out."

Pradeep Vala

Kamala's Cafe

  • User Testing

With Google Analytics data dashboard, we learnt about the user behaviours on the storefronts managed by business owners. The insights enabled operators to take business decisions such as promotions, discounts and product placements on their digital stores.

  • User Feedback

WhatsApp Integration: Users appreciated the convenience of communicating and transacting via WhatsApp, a familiar platform.


Simplified Checkout: The streamlined checkout process, inspired by Amazon's efficiency, was well-received by users for its speed and ease of use.


Intuitive Interface: Users found the platform's design intuitive and easy to navigate, which enhanced their overall experience.

  • Final Product

A DIY Platform to launch, manage and operate e-commerce stores

A DIY Platform to launch, manage and operate e-commerce stores

  • Dashboard for Business Owners

Business Owners can manage their store from an easy-to-use dashboard, add new products, fulfill orders and create promotions.

  • Marketplace for customers to discover new stores

A marketplace that lists all the stores launched on our platform so that customers can get huge collections of products.

  • Final Thoughts and Outcomes

The future of retail in India is going to be defined by seamless integration of online and offline customer experience.

The future of retail in India is going to be defined by seamless integration of online and offline customer experience.

  • Outcomes

We were able to identify a customer problem, build a working product from scratch, achieve ramen profitability, apply to Y Combinator and operate a SaaS business in less than 7 months.

Getting to learn from our users who launched their stores using our platform was truly life changing. It helped us push ourselves to understand the impact of our features and our product in solving a real problem.