QShop · Onboarding & activation
Getting more new merchants from sign-up to a working store and a first sale.
01 · The question
Why were 70% of new merchants signing up and never finishing their store?
02 · Getting to the root
I looked at exactly where people stopped and asked what each step demanded of them. For every drop-off point I wrote down a guess about the cause, then tested changes one at a time to see which guesses held.
03 · Result
Onboarding drop-off fell from 70% to 45%, and new merchants reached their first sale 15% faster. I also launched promotion and discovery features that increased order volume at store level.
04 · Still looking for gaps
The work continues. A recent audit found merchants could launch a store with no shipping set up, leaving customers stuck at checkout. I wrote a ranked fix list for engineering and put simpler shipping setup and a one-page checkout on the roadmap.
05 · Features & outcomes
Drop-off. A 25-point reduction through activation experiments.
Time to first sale. New merchants reach their first sale sooner.
Launch gaps. Found and specified the shipping gap at store launch.