Vitrinde
Marketplace platform for the Azerbaijan market
Vitrinde had demand on the buyer side — but seller onboarding was a cliff, not a ramp.
- ROLE
- Frontend Developer · UX Lead
- DURATION
- 2023 — 2024
- STACK
- React · Next.js · TypeScript · Form Systems
- PHILOSOPHY
- Think first · Build once · Scale forever
Sellers Were Leaving Before They Started
Vitrinde had demand on the buyer side — but seller onboarding was a cliff, not a ramp.
Analytics showed a sharp drop-off after the third step of seller registration. Support tickets repeated the same confusion: unclear requirements, inconsistent form behavior, no progress visibility.
The instinct was to redesign the UI. I pushed back — gently — and asked: do we understand why sellers abandon, or are we guessing?
This wasn't a styling problem. It was a trust and clarity problem wrapped in a technical one.
“Beautiful forms don't convert. Clear, predictable systems do.”
Following the Drop-Off Trail
I combined quantitative funnel data with qualitative seller feedback before proposing any solution.
I instrumented each onboarding step with event tracking and mapped the exact fields where users hesitated or abandoned.
Three interviews with sellers who completed registration and three who didn't revealed the pattern: uncertainty about document requirements and fear of losing progress on refresh.
The strategy document I delivered prioritized progressive disclosure, persistent draft state, and a unified form validation language across every step.
Funnel Analysis
Identified step 3 document upload as primary abandonment point — 61% exit rate.
Seller Interviews
6 structured sessions surfaced trust and clarity as root causes, not aesthetics.
Solution Blueprint
Multi-step wizard with draft persistence, inline validation, and requirement tooltips.
An Onboarding Engine, Not a Form Page
I designed a reusable onboarding framework that could power seller registration and future vendor flows.
The wizard was built as a state machine: each step had defined entry conditions, validation rules, and exit criteria. No step could be skipped without explicit user intent.
Form state persisted to local storage with server sync on blur — sellers could leave and return without starting over.
Validation was centralized: one schema definition drove both client feedback and API payload shape, eliminating the classic 'it looked fine on frontend' integration bugs.
Deterministic step progression with guard rails and rollback support.
Shared schema — one truth for UI errors and API contracts.
Auto-save on interaction, recovery on return — zero data loss anxiety.
Visual step indicator, requirement hints, and success micro-confirmations.
Translating Between Business and Build
The marketplace team spoke conversion. Engineering spoke endpoints. I became the translator.
Business stakeholders wanted more fields upfront — 'collect everything now.' Data showed that approach killed conversion.
I presented the funnel data in their language: each extra field at step 3 cost an estimated 12% completion. That reframed the conversation from opinion to evidence.
For the backend team, I delivered step-by-step API contracts aligned to the wizard state machine — no more 'we'll figure out the payload later.'
Conversion impact dashboards
→ Agreement on progressive data collection over big-bang forms.
Step-scoped API contracts
→ Parallel development — frontend and API shipped in sync.
Onboarding FAQ co-written from interview insights
→ Ticket volume on registration dropped within the first month.
More Sellers, Less Friction
The onboarding system turned registration from a barrier into a guided experience.
A/B testing on the new wizard versus the legacy flow ran for four weeks. Completion rate, time-to-first-listing, and support ticket volume were the primary signals.
The framework became reusable — the same onboarding engine powered a secondary vendor category months later with minimal new code.
- Research turned a UI debate into a data-driven decision.
- Systems thinking made onboarding scalable beyond the first use case.
- Clear communication channels prevented siloed rework.
Ready to build something together?
I bring the same system-thinking approach to every project — from architecture to team alignment.