momo E-commerce: Elevating Search & Recommendation

Service

Product Design UIUX Design User Research A/B Testing

Client

B2C

Year

2024-Present

Led the UX/UI design for the Search & Recommendation team, optimizing product discovery pathways that resulted in a 27% increase in click-through rates (CTR) and a 15% boost in overall conversion.

Project Overview

Designing for Taiwan's E-commerce Giant

‍momo is Taiwan’s leading e-commerce platform, boasting an average of 1.7M+ Daily Active Users (DAU). At the heart of this massive operation lies the Search & Recommendation engine—the absolute core of the business. These two features alone drive over 50% of the daily traffic and contribute to more than 70% of the platform's total Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV).

The Business Challenge: Stagnation in a Hyper-Competitive Market

‍Despite its market dominance, the platform began facing severe headwinds due to fierce market competition. We observed critical warning signs: DAU was slowly dropping, and overall revenue was facing downward pressure. A strategic deep dive revealed a core issue: the legacy Search and Recommendation features were no longer effectively meeting user needs. Shoppers were experiencing friction in product discovery, leading to decreased user stickiness and lost sales opportunities.

My Role & Mission: Bridging Business Goals with UX

‍Stepping into this high-stakes environment, my mission was to act as the catalyst for change. As the lead designer for this domain, I was tasked with:

Diagnosing the Problem: Uncovering deep-seated user pain points through qualitative and quantitative research.
Redesigning the Experience: Revamping the end-to-end product discovery journey to make finding products effortless and intuitive.
Driving Growth: Increasing user stickiness, improving the overall shopping experience, and ultimately helping the business reverse the declining revenue trend.

Business Impact & Key Results

By aligning user needs with strategic business goals, the redesigned Search & Recommendation experience successfully eliminated product discovery friction. The new design not only revitalized user engagement but significantly drove bottom-line growth. Here is how we moved the needle at scale:

GMV YoY

CVR YoY

CTR YoY

The Strategy: A Full-Funnel Approach to Product Discovery

To achieve the business results highlighted above, a piecemeal design approach wouldn't suffice. I needed a holistic understanding of the entire e-commerce ecosystem. By mapping out the end-to-end shopper journey—from initial intent to final conversion—I was able to pinpoint exact friction points. The funnel below illustrates the strategic framework: decoding user mindsets at each stage, identifying design interventions, and measuring the localized impact that fueled our overarching success.

Strategic Interventions: Designing for the Shopper's Mindset

Looking closely at the user journey, it became evident that a one-size-fits-all solution would fail. Shoppers exhibit entirely different mindsets at various stages of the funnel—from casual browsing to high-intent searching. To effectively address these shifting psychological needs while navigating backend NDA constraints, I formulated a targeted UI/UX strategy.

Our approach was built on three core design pillars, ensuring every interface intervention was purposefully aligned with the user's current context:

The Three Core Design Pillars

Pillar 1: Frictionless Discovery

‍Every extra tap is a potential drop-off. We aimed to reduce cognitive load by anticipating user needs and streamlining the filtering and sorting architecture.

Pillar 2: Contextual Relevance

‍Shoppers don't just want recommendations; they want the right recommendations at the right time. We shifted the UI focus from "generic lists" to "hyper-personalized, context-aware product cards."

Pillar 3: Systemic Consistency at Scale

The Foundation of Trust. To seamlessly serve 1.7M+ DAU without creating design debt, every new search and recommendation component was strictly aligned with momo’s Design System. This ensured a unified user experience while drastically reducing engineering overhead.

From Principles to Practice: Tackling Core Frictions

Equipped with these foundational principles, we audited the end-to-end user journey to identify where shoppers were experiencing the most friction. Instead of redesigning features in a vacuum, we focused our UI interventions on the most critical drop-off points impacting our DAU and GMV. Here is how we translated these business pain points into intuitive design solutions:

Challenge 1: Shifting from Reactive to Proactive Discovery

The Pain Point: The "Blank State" Bottleneck

Data revealed a concerning decline in Search DAU. Our analysis uncovered a critical UX flaw: the search experience was entirely reactive. If users didn't have a specific item in mind and actively type it into the single, solitary search bar, we offered no inspiration. By relying on a single entry point and providing no proactive guidance, we were missing out on massive latent user intent and losing traffic.

The Design Solution: Creating Contextual Search Entry Points

To reverse this trend, we transformed the UI from passive to proactive. By analyzing user mindsets across different pages, I designed and strategically placed multiple new search entry points to prompt engagement before the user even formulated a query:

● Contextual Prompts ("Try Searching..."):

Immediately after a user clicks a product, the UI dynamically suggests 4 highly relevant keyword tags, capturing their immediate, localized interest.

● Personalized Pre-Search ("Suggested for You"):

Redesigned the search input state to greet users with personalized keyword suggestions based on their unique browsing history.

● Trending Leaderboards:

Introduced platform-wide trending search lists to provide social proof and inspire browsing users.

Challenge 2: Revitalizing the Browse Experience for "Window Shoppers"

The Pain Point: The Uninspiring Waterfall

Data indicated a concerning drop in average session duration. While high-intent users successfully navigated via Search, low-intent "window shoppers" were bouncing rapidly. Their behavioral data sent a clear message: the app simply wasn't engaging to browse. The existing recommendation feed was a monotonous waterfall of identical product cards lacking contextual variety. Without dynamic layouts or deeply personalized curation hitting their specific interests, users experienced visual fatigue and abandoned the app after just a few scrolls.

The Design Solution: Diversified, Psychology-Driven UI Modules

To transform passive scrolling into active discovery, I designed a suite of diverse recommendation modules tailored to different stages of the user journey, specifically leveraging e-commerce psychology:

● Personalized "Top Picks" Leaderboards:

I designed a hybrid module that merges personalization with social proof. By generating dynamic rankings based on the user’s unique search and browsing history, the UI not only suggests highly relevant items but also implies trustworthiness ("others are buying this"), significantly lowering the barrier to click.

●Contextual "Flash Sale" Injections:

Knowing our user base is highly price-sensitive, we integrated personalized, limited-time offers directly into the infinite scroll. I used distinct, high-contrast UI treatments to highlight these deals, creating powerful visual pattern interrupts that break the monotony of the waterfall and trigger impulse engagement.

Challenge 3: Resurrecting Prime Real Estate in the Bottom Navigation

The Pain Point:The Wasted "Golden" Touchpoint

Despite occupying a premium spot on the bottom navigation bar—a theoretical "golden entry point"—one specific tab suffered from alarmingly low DAU. My UX investigation revealed a stark mismatch between its high accessibility and its actual value. The page was merely a monolithic, uninspiring waterfall of products. Users quickly learned it lacked browsability and inspiration, developing "banner blindness" toward this crucial navigational element and abandoning the tab entirely.

The Design Solution: An Intent-Driven "Inspiration Hub"

To reclaim this wasted real estate, I spearheaded a complete overhaul of the page's Information Architecture (IA) and user flow. Partnering closely with the Marketing team, I transformed this dead zone into a dynamic destination for users wanting to "just browse and get inspired." We restructured the page into four strategically curated pillars that aligned perfectly with current business operations:

New Arrivals: Satisfying the desire for the latest trends.
Gift Guides: Solving the specific "shopping for others" use case.
Special Offers: Targeting price-sensitive impulse buyers.
Trending & Top-Ranked: Leveraging social proof for hesitant shoppers.

By replacing the single-feed layout with these diversified, context-specific UI modules, we successfully revitalized a neglected touchpoint into a highly engaging and profitable browsing destination.

Before

After

Reflections & Takeaways: Designing for Millions

1.Data + Empathy :

‍Data showed where users dropped off; empathy revealed why. I learned that my true value is translating raw algorithmic power into intuitive, human-centered experiences.

2.Scalability via Systems :

Designing for 1.7M+ DAU requires strict discipline. By leveraging and expanding momo’s Design System, we ensured platform-wide consistency and zero design debt for the engineering team.

3.Cross-Functional Synergy :

Impact isn't created in a silo. Collaborating deeply with Marketing and Data Science proved that the most successful UX solutions are tightly aligned with business strategies.

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