Product Shipping Restrictions

Project Overview

Shopify has partnered with Global-e to enhance the international selling experience for its merchants through the introduction of Markets Pro. By utilising Global-e's services, Shopify aims to facilitate the sale of a significant volume of catalogs worldwide. In this collaboration, Global-e will act as the MoR (Merchant of Record) and will bear responsibility for any customs penalties that may arise from shipping restricted products.

With the expected influx of merchants, a new internal is required to assist the compliance team review new Shopify merchant catalogues to identify which products need to be restricted for sale to all or certain countries.  

Problems

Global-e's current method of manually reviewing each product will likely struggle to cope with the anticipated surge in product influx from the extensive pool of Shopify merchants.

Business Goals

• Limit how many orders are rejected by customs due to products restricted from entering the country being part of the order
  - As MoR, Global-e is liable for any costs and penalties incurred when restricted goods are rejected by customs
  - This will help maintain healthy working relationships with Global-e's shipping partners
• Promptly approve catalogue for sale so that merchants can being selling goods internationally generating GMV

User Needs

The compliance team need a simply and efficient way to review and identify products that should be restricted in some or all countries.  

Constraints

Time: An MVP needs to be live in only a couple of months for the first wave of EA (early access) merchants.

Summary of the Solution

Catalogues are ingested from Shopify and indexed into Global-e's database. As part of the indexing, the catalogue products are scanned for a set of keywords - these keywords are associated with a set of restrictions. If a product contains one of the keywords, it is then displayed in the new restrictions tool as a pending restriction with the option to restrict or not. This saves the compliance team time having to scroll through and read every product description.

So that every compliance team member doesn’t have to remember every restriction for every country, the restrictions are mapped to the countries it applies to. For example, restricting a product as ‘wood’ will only restrict it in Australia and New Zealand.  

Design Process

Understand the business needs:

• Collaborated with the compliance team to gain insights into the business requirements for the product.
• Explored the reasons behind product restrictions and the potential consequences of shipping restricted items.

Understand the user needs:

• Engaged with the compliance team, which was responsible for expanding their team's capabilities in using the new product to review a large volume of products.
• Leveraged their previous experience, including manual methods like spreadsheets, to understand effective practices and pain points in managing product reviews.

Understand technical requirements and flow of information:

• Assessed the technical requirements and the flow of information between different Global-e and Shopify services to understand how these factors would influence the end product's design.

Consolidated findings into a user journey map:

• Synthesised the gathered insights and mapped out the user journey to identify pain points, opportunities for improvement, and key touchpoints.

Designed wireframes: ‍

• Created wireframes to visually outline the proposed design and structure of the restriction's product, focusing on enhancing the user experience and addressing identified pain points.

Tested wireframes with users:

• Conducted user testing sessions to gather feedback on the wireframes, ensuring usability, clarity, and effectiveness in meeting user needs.

Iterated wireframes:

• Incorporated user feedback and iterated on the wireframes to refine the design and address any usability issues or concerns.

Reviewed approach with key stakeholders: ‍

• Presented the wireframes and design approach to key stakeholders, seeking their input and ensuring alignment with the business requirements and long-term scalability.

High-fidelity MVP designs for handover:

• Developed high-fidelity minimum viable product (MVP) designs, incorporating refined visuals, interactions, and user interface elements, ready for implementation by the development team.

Continually sought user feedback and iterated:

• Engaged in an iterative process, seeking ongoing user feedback to identify areas for improvement and prioritize the addition of new features.

Rollout and Iterations

The new restrictions product has launched successfully, meeting business and user needs. Efforts continue to optimize product throughput and identify areas for improvement. Key iterations include:

Improved keyword scanning accuracy: A new restriction identifies products with insufficient information by considering factors like the absence of product images or a concise description. This ensures more accurate evaluation and flagging for further review.

Automation for scalability: While the current solution is effective, automation is necessary to handle the expected increase in merchant catalogues, especially from platforms like Shopify. The existing manual review process provides valuable human validation, allowing for refinement of the keyword list. This involves analysing keyword hits, removing false positives, and automating the restriction of products with highly accurate keywords.

These iterations enhance the efficiency and accuracy of the restrictions tool, ensuring appropriate evaluation and restriction based on keywords. As the product scales, further enhancements and automation will be explored to manage the growing volume of catalogues while maintaining quality and accuracy in the restrictions process.

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