Domain Visibility & Launch Readiness

The business goal was framed at a high level: reduce friction to launch. Domain setup was flagged as a likely contributor, and the ask was to simplify domain onboarding into something more frictionless.

Reworking domain setup could remove a key blocker to launch. We set out to test whether we could:

• Show domain options upfront, so merchants could commit to a path faster
• Move domain setup into sign-up, alongside other foundational store decisions
• Make a custom domain optional, so merchants could launch and add one later
• Use AI to suggest available domains based on the store or brand name, products or services
• Clarify domain statuses in the index table, so merchants could see whether each domain was connected, pending, or needed action

I led the design work across research, cross-team alignment, and a full redesign of the domain index table, working closely with engineering, a product manager, and a data scientist. Getting there took several steps, from understanding the problem to shipping the redesign:

• Finding where merchants got stuck. With the product manager, I reviewed over 50 Sidekick session recordings, audited support tickets, interviewed new merchants, and mapped the domain journey for new and existing merchants.
• Early ideation and aligning across teams. I shared early onboarding explorations based on our hypotheses with teams like Growth, which let us hand off domain selection at sign-up and AI-suggested domains to the teams better placed to own them. I also paired with the lead designer reworking the setup guide on whether domain setup should stay mandatory.
• Uncovering a launch-blocking bug. Merchants who customized their free Shopify subdomain expected that to complete the "Customize domain" task, but the setup guide didn't count it, so they couldn't launch. I pushed for the fix, which shipped in the first phase, and the discovery shifted our focus from domain onboarding to redesigning the domain index table.
• Refactoring domain statuses. The old table mostly showed errors, and its badges could show several states at once. I mapped every domain state and worked with engineering and product on a status logic tree that gives each domain one actionable status, with "Connected" as the default, so merchants could confirm their domains were set up correctly.
• Restructuring the index table. I redesigned and organized the table around how merchants use their domains. Primary domains anchor the table, with redirects and aliases nested beneath them, grouped by storefront. I added Quick Actions so tasks like renewing, setting a primary domain, or removing one take two clicks instead of four or five steps. I also worked with engineering to replace exact-match search with partial-match search, so one page works for merchants with a single domain or hundreds.
• Integrating with the design system. I worked closely with the Polaris design system team to align on the new index table component. I used Storybook to test and reference the component and contributed improvements and suggestions back to Polaris.
• Prototyping and reviews. I built working prototypes in Cursor and Claude and used them to present the designs to engineers and leadership, gathering feedback along the way. Live prototypes made interactions like Quick Actions easy to grasp. Testing them against backend constraints at an on-site in Ottawa led us to merge separate storefront tables into one.

Launched in late October 2025, this fixed the completion logic bug and gave merchants one clear place to see domain status and manage their domains at any scale, moving the needle on the original goal of reducing friction to launch.

• Routine domain tasks cut to 2 clicks, down from a 4 to 5 step navigation workflow
• One page now serves first-time merchants and multi-storefront power users without compromise

This is night and day. Great work team!

Manuel Darveau, VP of Engineering

• The ask isn't always the problem. We were asked to redesign domain onboarding, but research showed the friction came from several places. Digging deeper is what showed us what to fix.
• Test alignment and decisions early. Bringing stakeholders in sooner would have made cross-team alignment smoother, and stress-testing the multi-table design at scale would have caught the search limitation before we started building.