Trial Experience: Making and Keeping Availability Promises in Sterling OMS
Project
Project Excel
Role
UX & Visual Designer
Responsibilities
UX and Visual design for an e-commerce website and clickthrough demo for use by our sales team to highlight the value of Sterling Order Management.
Project Excel is an exec-sponsored initiative to create user experience trials for our lead-with and growth offerings. I was asked to design a trial experience for the sales team to showcase the OMS advantage of making and keeping product availability promises, ultimately driving cart conversions and positioning Sterling OMS as a "no-brainer" purchase for customers’ toolkits.
Challenge
Create an e-commerce site experience that feels cohesive with our OMS UI, but different enough that the two would not be confused. The experience should demonstrate our “wow” hooks for the offering:
Make a promise
Present real-time inventory to consumers across the network and provide accurate commitments to customers.
Keep a promise
Determine how and when orders can be effectively fulfilled based on cost, location, and transit times.
Goal
Have more prospects experience the OMS advantage to make their purchasing decisions easier and foster more qualified leads.
Team
This team was primarily comprised of executive level cross-functional stakeholders. I was the only designer and was solely responsible for design execution and deliverables.
Timeline
I delivered end-to-end designs for the e-commerce site in one week. Once developed, I designed the supplementary click-through demo in two weeks.
Process
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Competitive analysis
I first looked at intuitive e-commerce and checkout flows to find common and expected functionality in online shopping experiences.
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Site design
Keeping in mind our design system and the need for visual cohesion between the trial and our offering, I designed a shopping experience highlighting our functional competitive advantage.
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Demo design
After the trial site was developed, I designed a clickthrough demo that outlined several use cases for sales to showcase the value of OMS and its promising and fulfillment features.
Competitive analysis
I first looked at intuitive e-commerce and checkout flows to find common and expected functionality in online shopping experiences.
Site design
Sketches
I sketched out the basic flow based on my findings from the competitive analysis.
OMS UI comparison
When deciding the visual direction for the UIs, I had to make sure it would be cohesive with, yet still distinguishable from, our OMS product UI. We had a very short time frame, so I also had to be mindful in choosing components and functionality that already existed within our design systems. I opted for creating a custom color theme using Carbon’s Cool Gray palette.
Existing OMS UI
Project Excel site UI exploration
UI Kit
I created a style guide for the Cool Gray theme that our development team could reference.
Prototype and final designs
I was able to deliver an end-to-end e-commerce flow, including all screens, assets, and a click-through prototype within one week.
Demo design
After the site was developed, I was asked to design a supplementary clickthrough demo experience. This would be used by IBM’s sales team to demonstrate the value of Sterling OMS to prospective customers.
Outcome
⏱️ Designed and delivered an end-to-end e-commerce shopping experience in one week.
⏱️ Designed and delivered an internal demo experience in two weeks that made it fast and easy for the sales team to showcase functionality to potential customers.
📈 In the first quarter after the trial experiences launched, individual response for all CTAs went up 32% and account trial response went up 28% overall in our business unit.
Personal takeaways
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Able to show my skills in fast-learning, adaptability, and delivering polished designs under pressure
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Gained eminence through collaboration with executive-level cross-functional leaders
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