Shopify Markets
An empowering global campaign & brand strategy. Next stop, the world.
Step into a new world
An impactful global launch for Shopify Markets, helping merchants identify, launch, and optimize their store across multiple international markets.
The Challenge—
A barrier of fear and uncertainty preventing merchants from cross-border expansion.
Many merchants want to expand their sales into new cross-border or global markets but face multiple barriers, including fear and lack of confidence. We wanted to create a memorable product launch campaign to show our audience that global growth is possible for anyone. Our challenge was crafting a launch for Shopify Markets that builds confidence and makes global growth feel effortless with a visual system across the marketing website, admin tool, email campaigns, and social press.
Goals & Approach—
Overcoming barriers to global expansion.
We aimed to develop a unique concept and launch a campaign that empowers users to confidently expand globally. We began by analyzing existing data about merchants' barriers to entry. Our audience needs inspiration, empowerment, and trust, so we built a brand voice that is knowledgeable, approachable, and authentic. I worked with our lead content strategist to develop a concept that showed merchants they could transform their businesses globally overnight.
The Identity—
An iconic, timeless logo for the Markets product and a unique icon in the admin navigation.
Shopify Markets encapsulates global growth and guidance through the platform. We wanted to develop a logo icon mark for the Markets platform to symbolize the product and represent it uniquely in the admin navigation. The iconmark is timeless, easily identifiable, and expressive, subtly representing the idea of consumer expansion, globalization, and guided direction.
Collaboration—
A cross-functional approach to ensure consistency and effectiveness across every asset.
Video production
I worked with the video production/motion design teams to create assets and concepts while providing feedback for their produced explainer videos and animated visuals development.
Engineering sync
In building our website, I collaborated closely with our lead web developers from the beginning of the design process to ensure transparency about the planned UX structure and address any red flags.
Cross-team alignment
To ensure success, we sought alignment and feedback from multiple teams, including product marketing managers, product engineers, web developers, and the enterprise design system teams.
Stakeholder sign-off
I also presented the brand to chief officers and stakeholders with the marketing team's support to showcase our final concept with supporting assets, receive any feedback, and get launch approval.
Global Localization—
Going global, speaking local. Ensuring every market feels at home with localized content and experiences.
As a global enterprise, Shopify is available worldwide and prioritizes localizing its content in many countries to accommodate local languages, currencies, and social/economic inclusivity. We collaborated with our localization team to catalog all written content and translate it into the top priority languages for launch. We then ensured that all translated copy and graphics were implemented appropriately across each subdomain.
Campaign Launch—
Launching an impactful, out-of-this-world campaign to inspire and drive confidence.
"Step into a new world." The Shopify Markets brand launched with the bold vision of entering a new world through our platform. We developed visuals of glowing portals around the products and user interfaces, showing the instant transformation of merchants' businesses when using Markets. I executed a detailed guide outlining our voice & tone, personality scale, and visual system. With aspiring language like "A single store. Hundreds of markets. Infinite opportunity." we successfully created content to empower our audience across various platforms, including web, email, admin, and social media.
I also developed a system of admin illustrations that must be within the internal Polaris guidelines and consist of flat, minimal illustrations. I considered all types of diversity when illustrating people prioritizing representation. Accurately portraying different races, ages, identities, abilities, and body types and embracing differences to ensure we reflect belonging and inclusivity.
Next stop, the world
Our campaign concept transcends the perceived reality of global possibility with a brand voice that is knowledgeable, approachable, and authentic, bringing confidence to merchants.
Results & Impact—
After the public launch of the Shopify Market product and campaign, we quickly saw higher user engagement, high email conversions, and successful website engagement, with users staying on the page for an average of 5 minutes. The launch also led to multiple success stories from merchants who started with our product and were able to optimize their business, quickly expand to new markets, and learn through content guides—removing barriers to global growth.
Conclusion—
Building this global campaign evolved my creative process and ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams in a fast-paced setting. I asked questions to learn and adapt to the environment quickly while enjoying the challenge of developing an impactful story for our audience. This undertaking also made me think globally about our merchants as I familiarized myself with localization standards and translated visual information to an international audience.
