Exploring The eCommerce and Entrepreneurship Space As A Designer
It has been a while since I’ve shared the latest blog on my portfolio here. The past two years have been filled with lots of challenges and learnings. As I continue growing as a designer, I wanted to share a bit more on my journey so far within the eCommerce and entrepreneurship space after building multiple successful businesses and brands.
First of all, on top of still working on design projects for my clients, I took a chance at entrepreneurship as I have always wanted to build something from scratch and make a big impact on my community. I was given the opportunity to do so upon returning to Vancouver and having talented friends invite me to start businesses together. I was able to bring in my design and business skills and experience to the table to form a dream team with my co-founders.
Throughout the process, I pushed for our focus to be on our clients and their experience, which would help us stand out in this competitive industry. From client personas to journey maps, we made sure that every touchpoint people had with us and our brand was positive. We reviewed our data and gathered direct feedback to see how we could continuously improve. Together, we built multiple eCommerce, service, and mentorship businesses in the past 2 years, and one of them being my very first 7-figure business! I was excited that we empowered and supported 200+ entrepreneurs globally in building their very own online stores and brands. Our student retention rate was also very high from all the positive feedback we were receiving.
With that being said, the main market we were building our businesses within was eCommerce. I have always been super inspired by big eCommerce brands out there and have worked with multiple clients on their websites, branding, and digital marketing. The opportunities within this space is very vast and the tools and platforms out there to support eCommerce entrepreneurs have been very useful and innovative.
With little eCommerce experience, I invested in myself through courses and built my very first Shopify store with my team. I have always been passionate about Shopify and I was finally able to set up my very first few stores that hit 5-figure months! It was a super exciting achievement. The user experience on the platform was quite positive overall and I do have a lot of feedback from my experience. It was interesting to be on the user-side of platforms versus supporting the creation of it.
Since then, I have gained an immense amount of experience in the eCommerce space, from finding winning products, building a store that converts by focusing on providing a positive customer experience to implementing effective marketing strategies. From start to finish to scaling through branding and digital marketing, a lot of knowledge was gained. I am also super excited to have gained a lot of experience with Shopify because it is the top eCommerce platform right now! I even got to create my very first podcast that has consistently thousands of plays and 150 unique listeners. Not only that, but I was also invited as a guest speaker on a popular third party Shopify theme podcast.
As for one of the coaching businesses I co-founded, we built the 7-figure brand from scratch, and I supported in the design of multiple websites, as well as, supported in the creation of our online course and student experience that many of our students boast about. We consistently take in feedback and make improvements to our products, service, and platforms. From our efforts and knowledge, many of our students (even those with zero eCommerce experience) were able to make sales right when they launch!
Some of the many achievements from our students
As a co-founder, I brought in my design thinking mindset to the business and overall client journey. We put together personas to understand our ideal clients further. My team and I mapped out our client journey flow to ensure positive brand touchpoints at each stage. We then developed the website, course, funnels, and emails to connect with our ideal clients. Along the journey, we would have feedback surveys to see where we can improve the entire experience. My proudest moment was seeing that almost 90% of our 200+ clients are highly satisfied with our program and many of them wanted to renew with us too.
Client journey map
Overall, the past 2 years have been a challenging yet meaningful journey that has shaped me into a more strategic and hands-on designer and manager than I was before. I am now able to not only automate a large part of my businesses with a strong team but I also am still very passionate about designing powerful products with great user experiences. Entrepreneurship has given me the opportunity to come up with creative ideas along with my team and to test them with ideal users while iterating and improving our offerings along the way.