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Group Buying
Designing a localized commerce growth feature for international brands entering the Chinese market.
E-commerce SaaS
0→1 Feature
Growth
Localization
Company
Wemart
Role
UX Designer
Timeline
2019
Product
Web SaaS · Mobile
Executive Summary
Bringing a proven Chinese commerce model into a global-brand SaaS platform
Wemart helps international brands establish and operate e-commerce businesses in China through a retail SaaS platform integrated with major channels such as Tmall and JD.com. The platform also provides localized marketing tools designed around Chinese shopping behaviors.
At the time, however, the product lacked Group Buying, an increasingly important commerce mechanism for driving participation and purchase incentives in the Chinese market.
I designed a new Group Buying capability across the merchant-facing SaaS experience and customer-facing mobile interface, while aligning the feature with Wemart's existing product ecosystem and design guidelines.
Business challenge
A missing growth capability in an increasingly competitive commerce platform
Wemart already provided multiple localized marketing tools for international brands, but the platform lacked Group Buying, an important commerce mechanism in the Chinese market. The new feature needed to address market expectations while fitting seamlessly into the existing product ecosystem.
Research & Discovery
Product & Market Discovery
Understanding where Group Buying fits into the ecosystem
I explored Wemart's existing product ecosystem, the Chinese e-commerce market, and the design system to identify how Group Buying could best fit into the platform and create value for both merchants and end customers.
FINdings
01
Group Buying was not an isolated promotion—it needed to become part of the existing marketing ecosystem.
The experience needed to work alongside Wemart's other campaign tools rather than operate as a standalone feature.
02
The product had two very different users.
Merchants needed control over campaign setup and management, while customers needed a lightweight, motivating purchase experience.
03
Localizing commerce required more than translating an interface.
The interaction model needed to reflect how Group Buying actually works within Chinese shopping behavior.
04
Consistency mattered as much as feature completeness.
Introducing a new marketing capability could not come at the cost of making Wemart's broader SaaS platform harder to learn or maintain.
Design strategy
Connecting merchant control with customer participation
I designed the Group Buying feature as a seamless part of Wemart's ecosystem, with a focus on integration, simplicity, and engagement, so that merchants could easily launch campaigns and customers could quickly understand and join.
Solutions
Solution 01 — Merchant Campaign Setup
Turning a complex promotion into a manageable SaaS workflow
I designed the merchant-side experience for configuring Group Buying campaigns within Wemart's existing SaaS platform.
The workflow organized the key decisions merchants needed to make while keeping the interaction model consistent with other marketing tools.
Why this mattered
A new growth feature only creates value when merchants can confidently configure and launch it without adding excessive operational complexity.
Solution 02 — Customer Group Buying Experience
Making the offer easy to understand and join
The customer-facing mobile experience translated campaign configuration into a lightweight purchase journey.
Information hierarchy emphasized the offer, participation mechanics, and next action so customers could quickly understand how the Group Buying experience worked.
Why this mattered
The merchant workflow could be complex behind the scenes, but the customer experience needed to feel simple and immediate.
Solution 03 — Cross-platform Consistency
Designing one feature across two sides of the ecosystem
The merchant SaaS and customer-facing mobile experiences were designed as two parts of the same product system.
Shared terminology, visual patterns, and status logic helped maintain continuity while serving very different user goals.
Why this mattered
Consistency reduced the risk that a new marketing feature would feel bolted onto the existing platform.
Impact
Outcome
Extending Wemart's localized commerce toolkit
The Group Buying feature expanded Wemart's product offering with a key localized marketing capability, connecting the merchant-facing SaaS platform and the customer-facing mobile experience within a consistent design system.
Reflection
Reflection
This project taught me that localization goes far beyond translating an interface.
Designing for a different market requires understanding the behaviors, expectations, and product mechanics that make that market distinct.
Group Buying also pushed me to think about product experiences from both sides of a platform: the merchant who needs flexibility and control, and the customer who expects the experience to feel simple.
That balance between business capability, local market behavior, and user experience has continued to influence how I approach product design today.
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