NiftyCat is a preseed company that is looking to reinvent the e-commerce space using web3 technology. In this project, we will discuss the merchant side of things; creating NFTs to attract consumers.
As Web3 continues to advance, many users who have been so accustomed to Web2 are becoming lost in what exactly Web3 is. What can Web3 do for us and what are the benefits around it? All of us are lost unless we are someone who is already in the space.
NiftyCat is a new e-commerce platform that combines the assets of Web3 into a Web2 shopping experience. To begin this experience, we will be targeting Shopify users where merchants can design their own NFTs for their consumers as incentives for brand loyalty and enhance the overall shopping experience. Out with the old and in with the new!
In this project with NiftyCat, we will dive specifically into the merchant and consumer sides of the platform where we discuss how we create a space for Shopify merchants to design NFTs for their brand as ways to enhance brand awareness and attract new consumers.
The Problem
Web3 was becoming a huge topic and it was advancing in a way that many people outside of the tech space were having a hard time fully understanding. Many want to learn and understand what Web3 is, understand blockchain and NFTs but the available knowledge resource was minimal. This essentially created a huge opportunity for areas to inject small doses of Web3 assets, a little bit at a time.
Based on initial research and my CEO/CTO’s experience in their previous business, they realized that e-commerce (once a new technology) is now an outdated experience. Coupons and discounts to attract new consumers and retain current consumers have become stale and uninteresting. Riding the new interest in NFTs, we decided to follow this direction and combine NFTs with your typical online shopping experience.
Based on initial surveys conducted from 35 users who are interested in Web3:
63% were interested in learning more about NFTs
52% claimed to have little to no knowledge at all about NFTs
81% mentioned discounts and other perks being similar across many brands
There is simply nothing like this in the market yet. Shopping online is a space that many are familiar with, the only difference with this project is replacing your typical discounts with a gamification collectible experience with NFTs.
How might we…
Create a way to combine Web3 into a well-known Web2 space so that people are not as disconnected from the new technology?
Make shopping online more fun and attractive?
Business Goals
The business goal to start is simple, develop something that we can quickly launch and gather stronger insights on the product.
Goals:
Get 300 or more members to sign up
Gather user feedback
See at least 400 transactions between merchant and consumer for the following month
Remove engineers from being part of the merchant NFT creation process
Business Challenges
There is simply no platform to make this work without the need for engineers to manually build every single asset for merchants as the requests come in. So to start, here’s what we need:
A self-guided platform that allows merchants to build and design their collection (on their own)
A way that allows merchants to connect with consumers
Enable consumers to use the created assets to shop with brands
Competitive Research
As there are no direct competitors in this space, it was helpful to research general areas of how companies showcase existing NFTs. Companies like Opensea and RTFKT were good inspirations on NFT displays and the details that one would like to acquire for such assets.
Partnering with my UI Designer, we created a high-level moldboard to ground ourselves around NFTs in the current marketplace (figure 1). This gives us a sense of how assets are presented from a consumer perspective as well as how merchants may want to organize their brand. In addition, we did a similar exercise on merchant experiences, in general, to get inspiration on dashboard and/or data display styles (figure 2).
Figure 1: A mood board on how platforms currently display NFTs
Figure 2: A mood board on general data display and ecommerce platforms
User Goals
Initial research discovered around the subject of NFTS:
In 2023, the NFT market had 13.95 million users
In 2022, over $24 billion was spent on NFT platforms
More than half of NFT sales are under $200
14% of people interested in NFTs are between the ages of 18 and 24.
15% of people believe NFTs are worth investing in.
Based on this information found here, specifically, more than 50% of NFT sales are under $200 meaning that people are interested in dabbling but not ready to fully invest. This could mean that users are simply not as comfortable or knowledgeable in this space, confirming our direction of combining NFTs into a Web2 e-commerce experience. It is a space that many are familiar with, the only difference is replacing your typical discounts or coupons with a gamification collectible experience with NFTs.
As mentioned, the goal of this platform is essentially a way to merge Web3 into Web2 and the MVP of this project will be simple. All we want is a platform for merchants to do their magic without the need for our engineers who will then allow consumers to use these assets as goodies during their shopping experience.
Merchants: A way to increase business revenue and retain customers
Sign up
Design
Launch
Sales!
Consumers: A more interesting way to shop that will help me find a brand that I can enjoy
Get NFT
Sign up
Browse
Shop!
As easy as that!
User Research
Being a pre-seed company, we want to go quick. We want to design, develop, and launch so that we can get real product feedback rather than just conceptual feedback. Therefore, outside of the initial 30-member survey during the beginning phases, we did not conduct more in-person or live research. Moving forward, we relied heavily on secondary research and internal expertise to support our design decisions.
Personas
Kathleen Torp, 28
Online Merchant
Sells…
Aromatherapy products
Objectives and goals
Gain a competitive standing amongst others
Increase brand awareness
Improve on brand loytalty
Frustrations
Difficulty differentiating from all the similar businesses in the space
Minimal budget to have large promotions to attract consumers
Lynn Connelly, 29
Fashionista
Searching for..
Hidden gems at a good deal
Objectives and goals
Discover new brands
Purchase unique items
Discover new shopping trends
Frustrations
Product saturation
Increasing prices with decreasing quality
Too many similarities
Feature and Functionalities
To solve the user needs, here is what must be done:
Self-served system that merchants can use to promote their brands using NFTs
Proposed User Flow - Merchant
A platform for consumers to learn and utilize NFTs as a perk through the shopping experience
To zoom in and see the full details of the flow below, feel free to click HERE and dive into the Figma file.
Figure 3: The new proposed user flow for merchants from sign up to create to launch
To zoom in and see the full details of the flow below, feel free to click HERE and dive into the Figma file.
Proposed User Flow - Consumers
Figure 4: The new proposed user flow for consumers from receive, sign up, and shop
Initial Design Explorations - Merchants
Workspace
Figure 5: The main screens of the most well liked workspace creation process; create workspace and workspace dashboard
Collection Creation Process
Initial Design Explorations - Consumers
Claim and Sign up
Explore
Figure 6: The main screens of the most well liked NFT creation process; rarity, collection, and launch preview
Figure 7: The main screens of the most well liked NFT claim experience leading to account sign up
Figure 8 : The main screens of the most well liked browsing page
Dashboard Home
Figure 9: The main screens of the most well liked NFT consumer dashboard
The Prototypes
Moving as quickly as we can, I put together a simple prototype to showcase the major features of the platform, getting ready for some usability testing.
Merchant workflow - Creating the workspace for NFT collection
Consumer workflow - Creating an account for claimed NFTs and exploration
Usability Testing and Handoff
Time is of the essence as we close in on the launch date. Our goal is to gain real consumer insights but that is hard to do when this is a brand new platform with minimal users. We did internal usability testing between the designers and C-levels to speed up the process.
The CEO and CTO loved what we had so far and approved for development to start immediately. The designs were handed off to him and his team to work on and from here we talked briefly about the launch plan.
Final Designs
You can see below some of the major screens across both the consumer and merchant process.
Claim NFT
Exploration page where consumers can browse other brands
The collections listed within a brand
Specific rarities/NFTs per each collection
Collection of NFTs that a consumer owns
Merchant collection creation - collection details
Merchant collection creation - rarity details
Merchant dashboard on published/unpublished collections
Launch Plan
The launch plan was simple and it would be made available as a plug-in for our users who already subscribed early on and many who signed up to join our promotional event. The launch event would be an NFT creation event where members come together to create, mingle, and learn how to use the product.
The goal was to get 300 new subscribers and gather at least 400 transactions between merchants and consumers. Since engineers will be removed from here on out, it made the creation process much quicker and more flexible.
Unfortunately, my contract with the team ended shortly after the promotional event however, great news on the new subscribers metric. Shortly after the event, we received about 380 new subscribers! Seeing how things progressed, I think it is safe to assume the transaction wouldn’t fall too short from the initial goals either.
What I Learned…
Working with super startups is a whole different world. The process that you would normally implement with an in-house project is much slower and more intricate. We would focus more on setting the foundation and testing to ensure we are going in the right direction. But with a super startup idea, the goal is to get as much user feedback as possible, meaning minimal user research and testing, and launch as soon as possible. The extensive user research and testing will come post-launch. In essence, the process between a super startup and a developed company can be described as having an opposite process (to some extent).