As a product designer at Swym, I worked on their flagship product, Wishlist Plus. This case study shows how I helped transition their product from a web app to a Shopify-native app, adding thousands of merchants to our user base, reducing onboarding time and support dependency, and increasing feature adoption, while also earning the coveted 'Built for Shopify' badge (given only to apps that followed their design and dev guidelines to a T!)
Wishlist Plus is a Shopify app designed to let customers save their favorite products through a wishlist feature. It also offers additional tools like "Save for Later" options in the cart and the ability to subscribe to back-in-stock alerts for out-of-stock items. Beyond these shopping conveniences, the app includes marketing capabilities that help merchants re-engage interested shoppers by retargeting them using the behavioral data collected.
Wishlist Plus was powerful, but it wasn't part of Shopify. It was an external app, forcing merchants to manage settings, customize buttons, and even handle payments on a separate dashboard. This disconnect was a major source of friction. This off-platform setup caused issues:
- Merchants couldn't use Shopify’s theme editor to tweak their wishlist's look and feel. This meant no live previews and constant frustration.
- Simple changes often required a support ticket. Many new users would install, see the external dashboard, and uninstall immediately without ever asking for help.
Our goal was to rebuild Wishlist Plus as a truly native Shopify app. This meant we had to meet the strict criteria for the "Built for Shopify" badge, which became our primary constraint. We had to deliver on:
- The app had to be lightning-fast, meeting Shopify's stringent Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, INP) requirements.
- We had to adopt Shopify's Polaris design system for a consistent and intuitive user interface.
- Our loyal, long-time users needed to transition to the new app without losing their data or facing a steep learning curve.
Our strategy was built on a simple understanding of Shopify merchants: they prefer to operate from a single source of truth - the Shopify admin. We knew they value intuitive tools that give them direct control, with the theme editor being their primary means of shaping their store's experience. This led us to recognize that they place immense trust in apps that are officially endorsed by Shopify.
Previously, there was no onboarding in place, but with this release, we introduced a new flow that highlights all of our key features.
We redesigned the metrics layout to be more intuitive by bringing all the key data into one centralized view, instead of spreading it across multiple tabs.
The previous version of the Wishlist Plus app had a single page that grouped all the features together. But after conducting an IA test, we realized that breaking some items into separate pages would improve clarity and overall organization.
The new features page is structured around key shopper journey stages—Saving Favorites, accessing the Wishlist, and tools designed to bring users back to the store.
The old Wishlist app included a page for customizing the look of your Wishlist, but the preview didn’t accurately reflect the actual experience. On top of that, the launch point and the Wishlist page were separated, even though they’re closely connected. In the new Manage Wishlist page, we introduced tabs for easier navigation and discovery, and gave users much more flexibility.
We also noticed that the Wishlist on PLP and Save for Later features were managed separately from the main Wishlist settings. To streamline the experience, we brought them into the same interface as tabs - making them easier to access and manage, especially since the same theme settings apply to these touchpoints as well.
Previously, the app didn’t have a dedicated Marketing page - marketing alerts for shoppers were split across two separate sections, making them harder to find and manage.
In the new release, we introduced a dedicated Marketing page that consolidates all the shopper-facing emails, making it easier to manage and launch targeted campaigns from one place.
We also introduced a detailed editing page for each marketing email, allowing users to set automation conditions and customize the design and content of the email.
While I can't share specific figures due to an NDA, I can say that we successfully onboarded thousands of new merchants to our user base, and reduced onboarding time by 99.79%, and significantly reduced merchant reliance on support. Additionally, we've seen a 50% adoption rate for features that are entirely optional.
Working on a product constrained by Shopify’s strict guidelines was definitely challenging, but it greatly improved my ability to work within and deeply understand existing design systems. I also learnt a quite a bit on how to create illustrations, and while I might not be a pro, I'm quite good! One of my key takeaways was learning how to optimize assets and animations, and how those optimizations impact performance metrics like LCP, CLS, and INP. Collaborating with a team of incredibly talented engineers was a major bonus too. ;)
