[UX Research] Improving Shopee's User Experience

Making Shopping more enjoyable without interruptions

Hook 

Quick summary of the project. Why did this project happen?

Shopee is a mobile e-commerce platform available in the Southeast Asia since 2015. It is a virtual marketplace where customers can browse and conduct a purchase transaction with sellers on the platform. The e-commerce platform peaked with 43.93 Million visits as of March 2026.

Problem

Over time, the app's current Home Screen now has a high volume of promotional content in the form of popup ads, live-selling video, and mini-games to obtain discounts. Customers may find it hard to navigate around the app, causing confusion and frustration. The added friction of navigating the app can make it harder for customers to make informed decisions (analysis paralysis) when purchasing items on the platform due to the amount of information each has to absorb on the first screen.

I’m conducting this case study to answer some questions I had in my mind:

• There’s so much happening on the app. How many of these features are being used by people?

• What do other people think about all of these “noise”? Is it helping them decide which product to add to cart / purchase?

• Do people interact with features such as pop-ups and live-selling videos?

• Which of these features do people deem important for them?

By addressing the visual clutter on the Shopee's Home screen, it eliminates unnecessary noise, which can impair a customer's decision-making when purchasing items on the platform. With faster decision-making from customers, the faster will be the purchase transaction, which leads to more revenue in the long run.

The expected output is a list of recommendations on how to help make the app more intuitive to users without overloading them with information immediately on Home. 

Research 

To answer the questions above, I used the following research methods to check what the existing market does and how customers perceive these products.

• User Survey - To check how the target audience uses Shopee in relation to their needs. Also a way to check if they are availing all the features of the app every time they use it

• User Interview (Informal) - To garner organic feedback from actual users of the app on what they think are Shopee's problems and their process of purchasing items

• Competitor Analysis - To see how other similar apps do their user experience 

The goal of the case study is to improve the user experience of navigating and purchasing on Shopee, without causing analysis-paralysis on the customer's end.

Competitor Analysis

Lazada

• Live-selling – a series of currently-live videos where sellers show off their products to entice customers

• Flash deals – time-gated discounts where certain products are discounted low for a specific time. Once the timer expires, the product returns to its original price

• Discount Vouchers – digital coupons that can be used to discount prices of items. Some of the vouchers have specific criteria like “spend around P1000” to avail the said discount

• Parcel Protection - additional fee in which Lazada provides insurance for your parcels in case they get damaged or lost during shipping from seller to recipient.

• Bills Payment - feature where a customer can pay for their utilities on the app using the built-in e-wallet (LazWallet). By doing so, customers can get discount vouchers on their next purchase.

• Mini-game - a free-but-slow mean to obtain Coins, which can be deducted from the final prize of the purchase. Different rewards like voucher and items can be obtained as long as customers log in to play everyday.

Amazon

• Discounts and Vouchers – like any other online shopping platform, Amazon also offers vouchers and discounts depending on items. Discounts are also available during major holidays such as Thanksgiving (Black Friday), Christmas, Independence Day (for the US)

• Product categorization – products being sold on Amazon are grouped into their respective categories, making it easier for customers to browse 

Within the search results, there are also subcategories that customers can use when they are looking for specifics in the item they wish to order. I think this is a neat feature because it immediately provides options to customers in a broad aspect without causing overwhelm and confusion

• Rufus AI – Amazon’s AI shopping assistant. He acts like other AI assistants where customers can talk to it, asking for recommendations when shopping with Amazon

User Survey

I made a survey to test my hypothesis with real users of Shopee. The aim is to determine what customers liked and disliked with the app. This will help me determine if my hypothesis is grounded and if a lot of people share my pain points every time I use Shopee or just my own preference. The results will help me determine what improvements can be done to make it less frustrating

Things to find out in the survey

• Age demography of Shopee

• Users’ main purpose of using Shopee

• Features users use in the app

• How frequent do they use Shopee vs other shopping apps (eg: Amazon, Lazada, etc.)

• What do they like with Shopee that they don’t see in other shopping apps

• What can be improved with Shopee?

Data Consolidation

Survey Data - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pKUMKDBLigeH4W3-UDeDqaK1tau91weIbPDCZaZ42Ck/edit?usp=sharing

Survey returned 17 respondents with an age group of 26 to 33 years old. Majority of the respondents are using online shopping apps like Shopee, Lazada, Amazon, etc – with most using Shopee as their primary online shopping app. 

Features being used by respondents

Free Shipping Vouchers – vouchers in which waives the shipping fee. Usually appears on sale days or upon reaching a certain amount of purchase in the store.

Flash Deals – these are discounts that only appear within a certain time frame. Usually they span for an hour or two. During this time, the price is discounted at the lowest it can go. Once the flash deal ends, the price reverts to its original one. 

Shop Discount Vouchers – these are discounts that shops sometimes offer for first time customers. These can be used alongside other discount vouchers to help lower the price of the item. 

User Interview

I interviewed 5 people regarding their behavior when they are using Shopee to purchase items. I asked them how they shop at Shopee and what they do when purchasing both new and old items. Below are the findings that all 5 correspondents do when using Shopee

The main question of the interview are:

• How do they make the decision of purchasing an item from a store in Shopee?

• What features (of the app) do they interact when conducting a purchase transaction?

Friend Recommendations - the default answer from correspondents. Most of the time, they tend to steer to certain shops who were recommended by their peers due to past experiences. They decide based on positive experience from their peers, hoping that they too get the same positive experience as well.

Review-based - when looking for trusted shops, respondents scroll through the reviews of the product to see how it reaches the customer. This is their gauge of how the seller handles selling the product from checkout to status-update while in transit to arriving at doorstep to post-purchase customer support (if the need arises). The more stars previous customers have left on the shop, the more "authentic" it looks to their eyes and would lean more to conduct a purchase

Some respondents rely on reviews that comes with an image of the product arriving safely to the customer. This tells them the seller makes sure that the product is shipped and the item matches the images on the sell ad. This creates a sense of authenticity to future customers because of past transactions.

Market Research on Brands - when dealing with unknown brands, respondents usually conduct their own research regarding the brand. They tend to check for quality, authenticity, safety, and price of the product and compare them with other existing products. Once they are satisfied with the information they have found, would only then convert into a purchase

Popup Interactions only when discounts are offered - certain shops offer discount vouchers to first-time customers or returning ones when viewing their products. This is called reciprocity effect. By offering discounts to customers, especially if they are first-timers, brands want make them feel "valued", which taps into the feeling that "they need to give it back" to the shop. For first-time customers, this is also a way to assure them of your product and encourage them to conduct a purchase.

Pain Points

Too much popups - every time a customer opens Shopee, they are bombarded with popups pertaining to sale info and vouchers. They appear before one can search for an item on the platform. The popups are positioned on the middle of the screen to grab attention but obscuring relevant products and information.

Product Authenticity - customers find it difficult to determine if the product they buy are authentic. This is the tricky part with online shopping. When purchasing certain items like appliances, devices, etc, it is hard to gauge if the product is real or an imitation. Product reviews from other customers might help with the decision factor but most of the time, they provide little to no information about the product (they are comments on how fast the shipping of the product)

Confusing features - Shopee has a lot of features that appear on the home screen. But because they are introduced via popups -- which tends to be closed most of the time, customers are confused when they are prompted while in use.

Proposed Solutions

Paginated Popups - while reducing popups is the most ideal solution, Shopee is a shopping business platform. It needs to inform customers of the sales and deals they can avail in order to build trust. A middle-ground solution would be to just have 1 popup appearing on the main screen but it is set up that customers can scroll through the different infographic popups instead of having to close them one by one as they appear. This helps reduce frustration, overstimulation (from info and visuals), and by giving every business an equal chance to display their promos.

Remove unnecessary features - this requires further research to see if customers are actually using features such as the mini-games, live-selling, and bills payment. By removing the unnecessary features from the shopping app, we can lessen the storage load it takes up on devices and faster way to check out items.

Verified Shop Badge - display a badge on the shop's logo (and link by extension), informs customers that their product are authentic and comes with warranty when purchased, similar to having seals on bottles, medicines, etc. Of course, with the verified shop badge, the screening process to get them should be strict and objective in accessing the product on the platform. This can help increase customer trust with affiliated shops, and with Shopee as a source of original products at affordable price.

Conclusion

Based on the survey conducted, the average customer experience when using Shopee could be improved. With the survey conducted, I was able to determine some pain points that customers have. Pain points include too much popups, product authenticity, and confusion on some features of the app. I have proposed three different solution that can help alleviate the frustrating experience when navigating the app. I believe that improving the process of searching and checking items out with the app can help increase the retention numbers and helps build trust with their audience in the long run.