Sana Commerce Cloud Redesign
How Sana Commerce Cloud’s redesign boosted growth, won customers, and secured a ‘Strong Performer’ spot in Forrester Wave, challenging industry giants!
SaaS
B2B
Redesign
Design System
Product-Led Growth
Information Architecture
UX Strategy
Interaction Design
Final results from Sana Commerce Cloud first release
Sana Commerce is a B2B e-commerce platform designed to integrate with ERP systems like Microsoft Dynamics and SAP. It enables companies to streamline online sales, simplify operations, and create personalized buying experiences, making it easier to foster long-term customer relationships.
Timeline
Problem
Facing a critical crossroads...
Imagine Sara, an admin at a rapidly scaling wholesale company. Minutes before a critical sales event, she's trapped in a confusing maze of settings, desperately trying to update crucial product information. Sana Commerce v9's unintuitive interface and complex integrations meant users like Sara often felt overwhelmed, frustrated, and ultimately dissatisfied.
The interface is outdated and cluttered. Navigating through redundant menus to perform simple tasks is frustrating. We need a more intuitive user experience.
Ecommerce Manager
Manufacturing and Distribution
11-50 employees
Customizing themes is just too rigid. We need more flexibility and speed to keep our store looking fresh. The current system just slows us down.
Marketing Manager
Wholesale and Retail
11-50 employees
Setting up the system is a nightmare. It's so easy to accidentally delete important configurations. We need a more straightforward setup process.
Customer Experience
Electronics and Machinery
11-50 employees
This was more than just an inconvenience, it was affecting Sana’s bottom line.
8% annual churn rate and rising operational costs
Declining customer satisfaction (NPS dropping consistently)
View
Losing deals and falling behind competitors (low ranking in Forrester Wave)
View
It became clear Sana needed more than just minor fixes, it required a fundamental redesign.
Goals & Objectives
Why did Sana need this redesign?
Build a scalable & future-proof platform.
Enhance product experience to address user frustrations and needs.
Reduce operational - reliance on customization and support.
Boost customer satisfaction & loyalty.
Elevate market position & competitiveness.
Research & Discovery
Through user interviews and product analytics, we identified stories that highlighted key pain points. Users struggled with the admin interface, information architecture, order management, and when creating or updating content pages.
Workshop #2
Workshop #1
Internal and external user feedback, task analysis, and workshop insights gathered
Main areas we focused
Information Architecture: Users had trouble with terminology and finding specific features
Search and Facet Filtering: Difficulties in configuring search fields and navigation items
Catalog and Products: Suggestions for improved import functions, longer description fields, and product sorting
Themes and Style: Users wanted more flexibility in editing styles and content
Navigation: Confusion over links and discoverability, desire for more customizable navigation
Front-end Editor: Limited compared to other platforms, but useful for specific tasks like editing menu texts
Setup: Described as complicated and error-prone, with issues often arising from non-technical users
Content Pages, Emails, and Forms: Clearer differentiation between content page types and more flexible form and email options
Images and Files: Requests for pre-setting image properties and drag-and-drop functionality
Integration: Challenges understanding system integration with ERP and other systems
Feature prioritization
Customer insights were quantified using weighted scores, ensuring that priority was given to both new and existing features that directly addressed critical user frustrations and closely aligned with strategic business goals.
Weighted scoring based on Product Vision, User Experience, Impact vs. Effort, and Scalability considerations
Design the Journey: UX & IA Overhaul
Early lo-fi concepts in motion
Before diving into high-fidelity designs, I explored many low-fidelity prototypes to quickly validate layout ideas, IA patterns, and user flows. These early sketches helped us align across teams and iterate rapidly, paving the way for a more intuitive and scalable admin experience.
Lo-fi prototypes exploring navigation structure and theme customization flows
Sana Design System
Design System provided a centralized, reusable collection of UI components, styles, and guidelines, significantly accelerating the development of Sana's new React component library. (Case study coming soon)
I created the new Design System based on Atomic Design Methodology
New navigation with improved IA
Clearer terminology and logical grouping of related tasks enhanced navigation discoverability with an overall improvement of 32%
Admin overview
Before and after UI of Sana admin overview
UI improvements
Personalized greeting and experience to improve user engagement.
Clear insights and webstore metrics to take data-driven decisions.
Transformed UI from a basic, functional look into a modern, visually appealing experience, boosting user satisfaction.
Intuitive, well-organized navigation menu improving discoverability.
All-in-one CMS to match the competitors
Intuitive no-code drag-and-drop editor.
Possibility to create responsive grid-based layouts.
Real-time visual editing streamlines content creation and design.
Advanced scheduling & targeting for customer segments.
Rich customization options for adding media to enhance visual appeal.
Old: Users need to know HTML to add custom content
New: No-code visual page builder like other ecommerce platforms
Old: Rigid grid-based layout creator
New: drag-and-drop grid-based layouts
New: product page editor
New: flexible content creation
Results & Impact
The Sana Commerce Cloud rollout earned enthusiastic user feedback, highlighting its modern, intuitive experience, flexibility, and ease of customization.
The interface is outdated and cluttered. Navigating through redundant menus to perform simple tasks is frustrating. We need a more intuitive user experience.
Ecommerce Manager
Manufacturing and Distribution
11-50 employees
By far the best e-commerce platform that integrates fully with SAP B1. The new Sana Cloud platform is super modern and gives us a lot of flexibility to design with limited coding while offering our customers a dynamic experience. Sana has a really modern look and feel along with constant innovation that is super specific to SAP B1 and our needs.
VP of Operations
Wholesale, 11-50 employees
Used the Sana for 2+ years
Setting up the system is a nightmare. It's so easy to accidentally delete important configurations. We need a more straightforward setup process.
Customer Experience
Electronics and Machinery
11-50 employees
Became a ‘Strong Performer’
Sana was named a 'Strong Performer' in the Forrester Wave Q3 2020 report, sharing the position with other B2B Commerce Suites such as Oracle, SAP, and BigCommerce.
View
Annual revenue
(+7% YoY growth)
Revenue growth in the 1st year after launching
SUS higher than industry benchmark
Post-launch NPS
View
Key Learnings & Next Steps
Lessons learned
Iterate & validate continuously: Regular user testing was key to achieving design excellence.
Engage stakeholders early: Clear communication and alignment dramatically improved the outcome.
Manage scope creep proactively: Prioritize effectively and transparently to manage expectations.
Let your North Star guide you. No roadmapping methodology can ever replace a solid vision.
Next steps
Phase 2
Continuously refine the product based on user feedback, and product analytics.
Phase 3
Working with the CSM and Product Marketing team to support migration and create new content aligned with GTM strategy.
Phase 4
Improve the onboarding process to align with the product roadmap.
