Commerce / Mobile UX / Conversion
Mobile-first ordering experience redesign across BSS/OSS complexity
Redesigned MyRepublic’s mobile order journey to reduce interruption, improve decision clarity, and simplify conversion-critical steps while preserving operational reliability.
Role
Design Strategy, Leadership, Systems Thinking
Impact
UX, CX, product, engineering, and content/brand stakeholders
Timeline
Jun 2020 - Dec 2020
60%
Conversion lift year on year
S$5.2m
first full-year profitability
50.1%
Stake acquired shortly after
Feature Deep Dive
Tab 1 of 6
Moved Sign Up / Log In earlier so users could customise plans without interruption. This reduced mid-flow breakpoints and kept the order path coherent on mobile.
MyRepublic's Order Portal was the single most important conversion touchpoint in the customer journey - where user intent either became revenue or dropped off. Despite that, it had gone largely unexamined while the product grew around it. Redesign was driven by an executive mandate to improve mobile conversion, tied directly to growth targets. Here were the problems we found:
Several forces shaped what was and was not possible - navigating them was as much a design challenge as the interface itself.
Disclaimer: This section provides a high-level overview only. Specific implementation details are intentionally abstracted due to platform security and confidentiality requirements.
The redesign had to work across a tightly coupled technical stack that we had limited ability to change. Understanding what each system could and could not do was foundational to every design decision.
Billing and operational support systems were proprietary and internally managed; any changes to order flow logic, plan configuration, or customer data handling had to be scoped against what the BSS/OSS could support, making some "simple" UX changes technically expensive.
Mobile number allocation in Singapore is regulated by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), meaning the number pool was not ours to manage freely; numbers were drawn from a regulated pool, and once released back, could not be held or reserved for a user - this was the hard constraint behind the destructive "Change Number" behaviour we inherited.
The portal UI sat as a relatively thin layer on top of these backend systems; this gave us design flexibility on the surface but meant any stateful behaviour (such as preserving a user's selected number across navigation) required deliberate coordination with backend logic rather than being a pure front-end fix.
SIM card fulfilment was wired directly to delivery's logistics system; the delivery date and time selection step in the order flow was a live handshake with their scheduling API, which meant available slots were dynamic and the copy around delivery delays was not just CX preference - it reflected real operational variability we had to communicate honestly without alarming users mid-checkout.
A few calls were harder than they looked from the outside. Conventional wisdom says early login creates bounce risk; we reframed it around funnel recovery, arguing mid-flow abandonment at a high-intent moment was the bigger cost.
Tradeoff
Early login risks losing low-intent users who may not have converted anyway. Mid-funnel abandonment loses high-intent users who had already decided to buy - a significantly higher cost. We accepted the former to protect against the latter.
Balancing speed/autonomy against trust/buy-in. More explanation and evidence-sharing builds credibility but slows execution. Less explanation keeps pace but fuels doubt.
Tradeoff
Quick wins and visible proof points whilst incorporating skeptic feedback signals respect. Prove before persuading; a small demonstration often does more than a long argument.
Their instinct toward transparency was right, but the execution buried it; the compromise was a single plain-language line at the relevant step instead of a pre-emptive text wall.
Tradeoff
Reduced front-loaded detail in favour of contextual disclosure to preserve clarity at decision moments.
Deliberately built components and copy frameworks that could extend to broadband and future portal surfaces, accepting slower individual decisions to reduce downstream rework.
Tradeoff
Traded short-term delivery speed for long-term scalability and consistency across surfaces.
Journey Continuity
Reduced interruption and unnecessary context switching across the checkout flow.
Improved
Decision Clarity
Improved comprehension with cleaner CTA hierarchy and context-specific communication.
Higher
Mobile Usability
Card-first structure and cleaner information hierarchy supported faster cognitive scanning.
Stronger
