Bold Commerce

Flocker Merch Builder

Flocker, a Bold Commerce labs project, offered e-commerce storefronts and custom merchandise tools for Twitch content creators. The goal was to reduce subscriber churn and provide incentives to their most loyal supporters.

Timeline

2018–2020

During session recordings of creators building products, I identified the following issues in approximately 40% of the users studied:

  • Users interacted with fields out of order due to a layout that didn't align with their workflow. For instance, they were prompted to name a product before choosing its type.
  • Users encountered problems with image uploads related to minimum resolution, file size, gradients, and transparencies, as we hadn't made the specifications clear.
  • Users often missed setting subscriber pricing for their products, a valuable feature, because it was tucked away in a dropdown menu.

We understood that content creators lead busy lives, and our aim was to simplify their workflow with an efficient product builder. Upon identifying these issues, I proposed a series of improvements, and we swiftly put them into action:

  • We added images to the product type dropdown, allowing creators to visualize the products they were building.
  • Links to download the relevant product templates were incorporated inline with the graphics section, enabling precise artwork placement.
  • To address common image issues like transparency and gradients, we integrated tips with best practices throughout the creation process.
  • Research showed that creators typically named products after choosing the type and adding artwork so we moved the product name section down.
  • We also made products available in all sizes by default and removed the size picker to reduce cognitive load.
  • We eliminated the dropdown for subscriber pricing and made the fields visible at all times.

Updated product builder design (2019—2020)

Results

These changes to the product builder had an immediate impact. The number of created products increased by 40% and now matched our user signups more closely, and creators spent less time building each product.

The number of products flagged for low-resolution artwork decreased by nearly 30%, relieving our review team's workload. Creators saw increased sales among their subscribed supporters with the addition of subscriber pricing to their products.

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