Simplifying Secure Merchant Authentication While Reducing Login Failures
Redesigned the Merchant Dashboard authentication experience by simplifying password recovery, improving error handling, and strengthening account security to help merchants recover access faster while reducing support dependency.
6 Months
Web
Product Manager, Engineering, Security, Research, Customer Support
Timeline:
Platfom:
Stakeholder:
The Challenge
Merchants relied on the Merchant Dashboard to manage daily business operations, making account access business-critical. However, the existing authentication experience created unnecessary friction whenever users entered incorrect credentials or forgot their passwords.
Beyond usability issues, the login experience also needed to satisfy strict security requirements without increasing customer support requests.
Business Goals
Improve task efficiency through a more intuitive dashboard experience
Increase discoverability and adoption of newly introduced merchant features
Simplify navigation by redesigning the menu structure around merchant workflows
Create a scalable information architecture to support future product expansion
Discovery
To understand how merchants interacted with the dashboard, I collaborated with Product, Customer Support, and Engineering to review user feedback, navigation patterns, and feature usage data.
The research revealed that usability issues were less about individual screens and more about how information was organized throughout the product.
Key Insights
Through stakeholder interviews, product analytics, and usability reviews, four recurring themes emerged:
Existing navigation no longer reflected product growth
As new merchant features were introduced, the menu structure became increasingly difficult to navigate. Important functions were buried under multiple levels, making them harder to discover and access.
New features had low discoverability
Merchants primarily relied on familiar workflows and often overlooked newly released functionality because it wasn't surfaced naturally within the interface.
Information architecture lacked clear hierarchy
Navigation labels and menu groupings were inconsistent, requiring users to spend more time searching instead of completing their tasks.
Usability directly influenced feature adoption
The challenge wasn't the quality of the features themselves—it was helping merchants discover and use them more efficiently.
These insights shifted the project from redesigning individual screens to improving the overall navigation experience.
Product Strategy
Rather than simply reorganizing the menu, the redesign focused on helping merchants accomplish their daily tasks more efficiently while supporting long-term product growth.
The strategy was guided by four principles:
Prioritize merchant workflows
Organize navigation around the tasks merchants perform most frequently instead of internal product structure.
Improve feature discoverability
Surface newly introduced functionality naturally within existing workflows to encourage adoption.
Simplify navigation
Reduce unnecessary complexity by creating a clearer menu hierarchy and consistent labeling.
Build a scalable foundation
Design an information architecture that can support future product expansion without increasing navigation complexity.
Design Exploration
Several onboarding approaches were explored before selecting the final experience.
Option A — Complete navigation redesign (Rejected )
Although it improved organization, it introduced too much change for existing merchants and increased the learning curve.
Option B — Progressive navigation optimization (Selected)
The final approach retained familiar navigation patterns while improving menu hierarchy, grouping related features, and increasing the visibility of newly released functionality.
This balanced usability improvements with user familiarity and minimized disruption.
Solution
The Merchant Dashboard was redesigned to improve navigation efficiency, increase feature discoverability, and create a more scalable user experience.
Simplify navigation hierarchy
Related features were reorganized into logical groups, making important functions easier to locate and reducing the time required to complete common tasks.
Improve menu guidance
Clearer labels and visual hierarchy helped merchants understand where functions were located and what actions they could perform.
Increase feature discoverability
Newly released features were integrated into existing navigation patterns, making them more visible without interrupting merchants' workflows.
Design for future scalability
A flexible information architecture was established to support future product growth while maintaining a consistent navigation experience.
Together, these improvements created a dashboard that was easier to navigate, simpler to learn, and better prepared for future expansion.
Validation
The proposed navigation structure was reviewed collaboratively with Product Managers, Customer Support, Engineering, and business stakeholders to ensure it aligned with both merchant needs and business objectives.
Interactive prototypes were evaluated through usability testing, focusing on task completion, navigation efficiency, and feature discoverability. Feedback from these sessions informed iterative refinements before development, giving the team confidence that the new information architecture improved usability while minimizing disruption for existing merchants.
Business Impact
✔ Improved overall dashboard usability through clearer navigation
✔ Increased discoverability of newly released merchant features
✔ Reduced navigation complexity across key workflows
✔ Established a scalable information architecture for future product growth
✔ Improved cross-functional alignment through a consistent navigation framework
The redesign demonstrated that optimizing information architecture can significantly improve the usability of an expanding product without requiring major changes to individual features.
Key Learnings
As products grow, usability challenges often stem from how functionality is organized rather than the features themselves.
This project reinforced that effective information architecture is a strategic product decision, not simply a navigation exercise. By organizing the dashboard around merchant workflows instead of internal product structures, we created an experience that was easier to navigate, supported future expansion, and encouraged adoption of new functionality.