Affiliate marketing · 2023 — 2025
A cosmetic refresh turned into a full redesign for 200k publishers
200k publishers, 5k merchants, and most user tasks routed through account managers. The team debated a cosmetic refresh. I joined as the sole designer and pushed for a full redesign instead.
Clearer specs, plus a shared Figma UI kit. The back-and-forth with engineering during build mostly stopped.
Reusable components and defined patterns let the team ship faster than the old platform allowed.
Easier registration, self-service campaign tools, and AI search knowledge base did most of the lifting.
Tied to manager staffing. Fewer support and account manager inquiries meant leaner ops.
Refreshed UI and simpler workflows brought previously inactive users back.
A modern product is easier to sell.
Two numbers are measured. The rest are projections, and the rollout is still running.
The platform looked like it needed a cosmetic refresh. But the UI issues were symptoms, not the disease.
Research without access to end users
I couldn't interview end users directly — affiliate marketing is a closed world, and access was limited. So I ran research through the people on the phone with clients every day: account and sales managers.
- Contribution
- Product design, UX research, Design direction, B2B SaaS
- Duration
- Almost 3 years
None of the real problems were about how the platform looked.
Usability
Dense interfaces with steep learning curves meant most tasks required a trained account manager to step in — slow and expensive on the operations side.
Transparency
Merchants had no direct control over their own campaigns, and that killed trust. Sales managers were doing work the product should have done.
Complexity
Desktop only. And the workflows made no sense unless a human walked you through them.
Visual identity
The platform looked a decade old, which made acquisition harder than it needed to be.
Set the direction first, then argued the team out of shipping it all at once.
From sole designer to Design Lead
I joined as the sole designer. I ran a design audit, did stakeholder interviews, and mapped problems and user journeys. Once research wrapped, I set the visual direction and the new architecture.
Three more designers joined later, and I moved into Design Lead. The redesign ran in two parallel streams — publisher and merchant. This case covers the merchant side.
A phased rollout instead of a hard cutover
The team wanted to ship the new platform in one go. I pushed back.
We weren't just changing visual style — we were rebuilding the architecture and reworking core flows. A hard cutover would tank retention. So I proposed three stages.
Neutral palette update on the existing platform
Calmer, more modern, no workflow changes.
Ship new features piece by piece over months
All aligned with the upcoming UX direction, so users adapted incrementally.
Full redesigned platform
About a year in. By then users had already lived through most of the changes.
Key improvements
Compact layout
Critical information now fits on the first screen, so nobody scrolls for what should be obvious.
Visual hierarchy
Key data pulls forward and everything else recedes.
Reduced cognitive load
Secondary details are tucked away where you can still reach them.
Airy interface
Fewer elements, each doing more. The page got easier to read and to move through.
The redesigned merchant platform.
Happy to walk through the parts that did not fit here. Let's get on a call.