Shopify

The Problem

Merchants using Canada Post often have better rates than offered by Shopify. From the 55,690 shops with a Canada Post fulfillment, 2,400 have a Bring Your Own Account (BYOA) account and 75% of these BYOA shops have purchased a label using Shopify Shipping. Merchants today can use their Canada Post account to display rates at checkout but can’t purchase labels through it within our admin. Merchants fulfilling their orders outside of Shopify Shipping have to pay for 3rd party apps to complete their fulfillment flow.

The Opportunity

There is an opportunity with Bring Your Own Account merchants who are currently not purchasing labels through Shopify Shipping (600 shops) and Shops with Canada Post fulfillment who are using a 3rd party app to fulfill their orders. The biggest opportunity stands with the 93,385 eligible shops, representing more than 5 million domestic fulfillments.

The Why

By allowing merchants to print Canada Post labels through Shopify with their own Canada Post account, merchants will be able to complete their orders on the platform, using the existing fulfillment flows. BYOA will be monetized and generate positive profit for Shopify in the long term.

Optimized Workflow

An optimized user flow was created based on the understanding of the segments of merchants we were targeting.

Explorations

Old VS New

In the shipping and delivery settings page, merchants have to click on the carrier account, then click on the connect account in the modal that pops up as shown in the image below. This was changed in the optimized flow, BYOA carriers are embedded in the carrier connection card as shown below. This was done to streamline the process of connecting carrier accounts.

Carrier Connection Modal

The old modal has an informational banner that is not required until the account has been activated which was removed in the new version. Merchants are required to add rates after connecting their accounts, including the banner before the account was connected felt like a disjointed flow. Another change was the removal of the language requirements as it was not serving any purpose. Switching between Shopify and BYOA in the "rates customers see at checkout" and "account to buy labels felt" unneccesary and complicated for the merchants, thus they were removed as well. The last change was the addition of a section to find your credentials for a better user experiece as this was a time consuming process in the old modal.

Adding Rates

Adding rates to display at checkout is a crucial stage in Bringing Your Own Account (BYOA). The old modal did not have a dedicated button to add rates, instead, an informational banner was used to remind merchants about setting up their rates. An addition of a dedicated button to add rates was implemented in the new modal since it is an important step in the process.

Connected Modals

When connected in the old modal, clicking on manage carriers opens up another modal with the ability to edit and disconnect accounts. When connected, the new modal shows an active status to let merchants know that their account has been connected. Clicking on manage shows a drop down menu with options to activate, deactivate, edit and disconnect account. Deactivate/activate account toggles between BYOA and Shopify rates easily without having to disconnect the account.

The Label Purchase Workflow

Single Label Purchase Flow

Consolidating on the existing BYOA registration flow for UPS, I iterated on different ideas for implementing BYOA in both the single and bulk label purchase flows as shown in the images below. Using your own account was clearly stated in both shipping service cards and summary cards as well to let merchants know that they're buying their labels based on their negotiated rates with carriers.

Bulk Label Purchase Flow

Using your own account was implemented on the bulk label purchase flow by consolidating on waht was created for the single label purchase flow.

BYOA Smartphone Solution

Mobile Flows

Impact

• Increased label purchase volume by 3% in Canada
• 10% increase in the number of eligible fulfillments that have used BYOA Canada Post for label purchase
• Increase in new BYOA merchants and retention of existing merchants

Next Steps

• Implementing other features like the creation of manifest based on Canada Post requirement
• nboarding other carriers by consolidating on the success of Canada Post BYOA