Company
Pricepally
Industry
E-commerce (Groceries)
Platforms
Web app, Mobile app
Role
Product Designer
Year
2025
PricePally Before The Redesign
Discovery (Research & Insights)
Before I touched a frame, I needed to understand where the experience was actually breaking down and why.
I ran a combination of user interviews, session recordings, drop-off analysis, and a competitive teardown across Nigerian grocery e-commerce alternatives. Here's what the research surfaced:
Method
What I Learned
How It Shaped the Design
User interviews (18 sessions)
Users described a "bait-and-switch" feeling, prices shown on product pages didn't match what they saw at checkout, and they rarely completed a purchase after that moment
What actually happened was that product price changed after a long time in cart, made pricing transparent at the product detail level, and nudge users at price fluctuation even at cart level
Session recording review
Cart abandonment wasn't happening at checkout, it was happening when users returned to a session and found their cart empty or changed
What happened is that when users switch regions to a region that some items are not available or has different pricing, it drops from their cart due to technical limitation without any notification, I designed a nudge with an option for users to add them back when they revisit a region that has those items.
Drop-off funnel analysis
40% of users who reached checkout were abandoning before payment, higher than category benchmarks
Stripped checkout to minimum steps; kept order summary visible throughout
Competitive teardown
Competitors either had rich catalogues with poor pricing clarity, or simple experiences with limited range, no one was doing both well
Positioned Pricepally's own-inventory model as a trust advantage and made it visible in the UI
Navigation behaviour
Users couldn't distinguish between the local and international stores, they were browsing one, landing on items from the other, and getting confused by the price differences
Redesigned store switching to be explicit and persistent, not contextual
The insight that anchored everything: Users weren't abandoning because they didn't want the product. They were abandoning because at multiple points in the journey, something happened that made them feel like they couldn't trust what they were seeing. That's a different problem from "the UI is unclear." It's a credibility problem and it required a different kind of solution.
Key Decisions & Trade-offs
Decision
Rationale
What We Rejected & Why
Pre-switch cart conflict warning + dropped item recovery
Pricepally operates across multiple regional stores (Lagos, Abuja, Ibadan, Port Harcourt) each with its own inventory and pricing. A backend constraint meant that switching regions didn't just change what was visible; it invalidated any cart items unavailable in the new region. Items that existed in a Lagos cart but weren't stocked in Ibadan would be silently dropped and critically, they wouldn't return even if the user switched back. This was causing cart loss that users had no warning about and no way to recover from. Rather than hiding the constraint or letting the silent drop continue, I designed two interventions: a pre-switch warning modal that clearly told users their cart might be affected before they confirmed the region change, and a post-switch recovery state that surfaced any dropped items with a one-tap option to re-add them once back in the original region. The decision was to treat the backend constraint as a user experience problem, not an engineering footnote and give users both the information to make an informed choice and the tools to recover if items were lost.
Silently dropping cart items and doing nothing was the existing behaviour, technically the path of least resistance. An alternative was to freeze the cart and prevent region switching entirely, but that would have blocked a legitimate and frequent user need. The warning + recovery pattern respected both the backend reality and the user's right to understand what was happening to their basket.
Separate store switching, not blended browsing
Users needed to know which store they were in. Mixing local and international items created pricing confusion that was eroding trust.
A blended catalogue felt more "modern" and allowed richer cross-selling, but the confusion it caused outweighed the discovery benefit
Persistent order summary during checkout
Removing the order summary during payment increased user anxiety. Keeping it visible throughout let users stay oriented and reduced second-guessing
A collapsed summary is standard in many checkout flows and saves screen space, but our user interviews showed it made Pricepally's users nervous
Loyalty as layer, not a separate destination
Embedding loyalty signals (points, milestones) within the shopping flow rather than behind a dedicated loyalty tab meant users encountered it naturally rather than having to seek it out
A standalone loyalty hub is common and easier to build, but users who never navigated to it never engaged with it
Customisable recurring lists
For a grocery platform, repeat behaviour is the business. Lists that persist and can be reactivated in one tap directly reduced the friction of re-purchasing
Recommendation-only return mechanics (like "buy again") require less user setup, but they hand control to the algorithm rather than the user, which grocery shoppers don't always trust
4. Checkout Flow
Checkout abandonment was sitting at 40% before the redesign. That number tells you there's a specific moment or a series of moments where users are deciding the effort isn't worth it.
I stripped the checkout flow back to its essential steps and removed every point of unnecessary decision-making. Payment options were made clearer. Delivery details were easier to complete. The order summary stayed visible throughout, so users never had to guess what they were about to pay.
The redesigned flow reduced abandonment from 40% to 15%.
5. Loyalty & Gamification
Once the core experience was cleaner, I looked at what would give users a reason to come back.
I introduced a loyalty layer points, purchase milestones, and rewards tied to shopping behaviour that gave returning customers a sense of progress and a reason to keep their purchases on Pricepally rather than spreading them across alternatives. The gamification elements were designed to feel natural to the shopping experience, not bolted on.
6. Mobile Application
Even though the web was a major traffic source, data showed that 40% of Pricepally's users were shopping on mobile. That meant the mobile app wasn't a secondary concern, it was where the most of the experience actually lived.
After completing the web redesign, I moved directly into mobile with the same priorities: find what you need, understand what you're getting, complete the purchase without friction. On a smaller screen, every decision about hierarchy, tap targets, and information density matters more. I made sure the mobile experience didn't just mirror the web design, it was built for how people actually use their phones to shop.
Key mobile-specific decisions:
Bottom-anchored primary actions — add to cart, checkout, and payment CTAs were placed within natural thumb reach, not at the top of the screen
Simplified navigation — the local/international store switch that required education on web was handled with a persistent, clearly labelled toggle on mobile
Collapsed pricing detail — full pricing breakdowns were available but not the default view; the headline price was shown first, with detail one tap away
Streamlined cart review — the mobile cart was optimised for quick review and edit, not discovery; recommendations were secondary to confirmation
Impact
Business Metrics
Metric
Before
After
Change
Checkout abandonment rate
40%
15%
−25 pp
Conversion rate
Baseline
—
+45%
User retention (3 months)
Baseline
—
+35%
Session duration
Baseline
—
+20%
User satisfaction (survey)
—
90% preferred redesign
—
What the Numbers Mean
The checkout abandonment drop from 40% to 15% was the most direct signal that the pricing transparency work had landed. Users were no longer being surprised at the point of payment and when they weren't surprised, they completed the purchase.
The retention increase wasn't just from the loyalty layer. It came from the combination of a more trustworthy cart experience and the customisable lists feature, which gave users a reason to return that was personal to their shopping habits rather than just points-driven.
The session duration increase told a different story, users were spending more time on the platform not because it was harder to use, but because they were browsing more confidently. Confusion had been replaced with exploration.