southbound-shipping

Introduction

Internship @ Purolator.

I joined Purolator as a Product Manager Intern in summer 2024, supporting the team behind E-Ship Online (ESO) — an online shipping channel for low-to-medium volume shippers, which processed over 20M shipments and generated $495M in revenue in 2023. While my role primarily focused on product management, I proactively expressed interest in product design, which led to an opportunity to lead the redesign of the ‘Create a Shipment’ flow for Southbound shipping (Canada to the U.S./abroad).

I collaborated closely with the senior UI/UX designer to improve ESO user flows and modernize the interface, translating requirements into user-friendly designs that aligned with both business goals and maintained consistency with other areas of the product.

Overview

Design Process.

01 Understand

Product

Requirements

User Stories

Problem

02 Design Process

Wireframes

Product & Design Team Syncs

Demo Presentations

Iterate & Refine

03 Wrap-Up

Final Solution

Hand-off

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01 Understand

Familiarizing myself with Purolator ESO.

Getting familiar with the product was a crucial first step. To ramp up, I met with the ESO Product Manager and explored the staging environment to better understand the platform’s key features, user journey, and business goals.

In addition, I consulted the senior UI/UX designer who had been leading the revamp for Purolator ESO. We aligned on the design system, best practices, and her existing design patterns. This ensured that my work would integrate seamlessly into the broader redesign and support a cohesive user experience across the platform.

The current Purolator ESO 'Create a Shipment' interface.

Understanding product requirements and user stories.

Next, I dove into the requirements and user stories understand the problems to be solved. Since the Purolator ESO revamp had been in progress before I joined the project, the research, ideation, and scoping phases were already completed. This allowed me to focus on translating the existing requirements into user-friendly designs that aligned with the project’s goals.

Given that 53% of Purolator’s southbound volume was processed through ESO in 2023, improving this experience was an opportunity to better serve a significant portion of our customers and reduce friction in a high-volume, high-value workflow.

Quantitative data analyzed from Google Analytics revealed that users took 3x longer to complete a southbound shipment compared to a domestic one, with the U.S./International page alone taking an average of 1 minute and 29 seconds — far longer than the 27 second average across the rest of the flow.

The current Purolator ESO 'U.S./International' interface.

02 Design Process

Beginning the design process.

After establishing a solid understanding of the product and the problem to be solved, I began my design explorations by reviewing the existing designs from other areas of our product, researching competitors, and gathering inspiration. I carefully examined the designs created by the Senior UI/UX Designer to identify reusable components, ensuring consistency, and adherence to the design system.

Weekly product & design team syncs allowed me to gather feedback from key collaborators—PMs, a senior designer, and occasionally a business analyst—while keeping the feedback loop focused and aligned.

As I created my wireframes, I had regular syncs with product and design throughout the week to share progress and encourage collaboration. These informal, internal team meetings allowed me to present my design files and share various design options I had created to gather feedback. After each discussion, I iterated on my designs based on the team's input and shared my updates either asynchronously or presented them during the next team sync. This iterative process occurred on a weekly basis.

In addition to the internal syncs, I also presented to other teams and senior leadership within the company.

Following a few weeks of exploration, we agreed that it would be beneficial for me to present my work to other teams and senior leadership within the company, particularly those with expertise in southbound shipping, including perspectives on the customers, customs processes, and logistics operations. These meetings aimed to share our progress, align on the project’s direction, and address any overlooked concerns or pain points. The invaluable insights we gained from these sessions led us to conduct further research, perform competitive analysis, and adjust some of the initial requirements to better align with both strategic goals and the newly uncovered challenges.

03 Wrap-up

The Final Solutions

Address suggestions and auto-completion for U.S. destined shipments.

In addition to UI/UX improvements to the shipment creation flow, I collaborated with the product manager to propose address suggestions and auto-completion for U.S.-destined shipments. This is a "start typing..." feature where a list of matching addresses is displayed after a user types three characters. Selection of a suggested address will automatically populate the 'Ship To' field, reducing manual data entry errors. This feature leverages a third-party integration, such as the Google Maps or USPS API.

Before

The lack of clear visual hierarchy and meaningful grouping makes the form difficult to scan and navigate. Excessive upfront content without progressive disclosure increases cognitive load, overwhelming users with too many inputs and choices at once.
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After

Information is organized into distinct sections with a clearer hierarchy, and a progress indicator guides users through the shipment process. We introduced address suggestions and auto-completion to streamline the workflow and reduce manual entry errors. Non-essential fields are hidden until needed, minimizing upfront choices and improving focus

Import shipment content details from CSV.

During my demo presentations, the customer experience team highlighted a major pain point: manually entering product details for customs was time-consuming and repetitive. To address this, I worked with the development, product, and design teams to repurpose an existing 'Import' feature, enabling users to upload shipment content via CSV, aligning with how most businesses already manage product data.

Before

Southbound shipments require identification of shipment contents. Users need to input details for each item in their shipment, which is time-consuming for shipments that contain many products.

After

The import feature will provide users the flexibility to upload shipment content using a template or custom CSV, helping reduce the time spent creating southbound shipments.

Purolator commercial invoice sent digitally directly to Purolator.

Another major pain point raised by the customer experience team was the high volume of support calls related to customs delays, most often caused by missing paperwork. Since Purolator has limited control once a shipment is held at the border, these issues lead to frustration for both customers and support teams.

Before

Users must either generate their own commercial invoice or have Purolator generate one, both of which require printing and physically including it with the shipment. If forgotten, the shipment would be held at customs, causing delays.

After

When using a Purolator commercial invoice, it can now be submitted digitally—eliminating physical copies and manual handling. This ensures the invoice is received and processed more quickly.

Handing-off my designs

After multiple rounds of iteration and feedback from various teams and stakeholders, we successfully finalized the designs. As my internship neared its end, I began wrapping up the project. I met with our Senior UI/UX Designer to hand off the design files, allowing her to make any further refinements in the future if needed. I updated engineering specification documents and added developer notes within the Figma file outlining key interactions and functionalities. Since contractors had not yet been assigned for the product's development, I didn’t have the opportunity to hand off the design files to developers directly.

Next Steps

Future Considerations

Usability testing

Before development begins, it would be valuable to test the design prototypes with customers. This would help identify any major issues, gather feedback, and make quick improvements, ensuring the experience works well for both users and the business before committing engineering resources.

Third-party integrations

Further investigate whether to integrate Google Maps or USPS API for U.S. address autocompletion and address validation to determine the most effective solution in terms of accuracy, user experience, and integration feasibility. Ultimately, we want the one that reduces address errors and streamlines the southbound shipment flow.

Verify terminology used in wireframes

Ensure that the terminology used throughout the product is clear, intuitive, and aligned with both industry standards and user expectations.

Responsive design

Since most Purolator customers use desktops, we’ve focused on a desktop-first design. However, data shows that there is a subset of users who access the platform from other devices, so it’s important to ensure a consistent and effective experience across all devices moving forward.