Webgility
Transforming Webgility Online into a clearer, scalable SaaS experience for ecommerce sellers.
At Webgility, I led UX and product design direction for Webgility Online, a SaaS platform that helped ecommerce sellers connect their stores, marketplaces, and accounting systems so they could manage orders, products, sales, and financial data more efficiently.
The product solved a real business problem: sellers needed a way to get orders from channels like Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart, and WooCommerce into QuickBooks without manually reconciling every sale or hiring a full-time accountant.
But the experience around that value was fragmented. The app UI was inconsistent, onboarding was too technical, settings were difficult to understand, and customers had to move between separate product and account-management experiences that looked and felt disconnected.
My work focused on modernizing Webgility Online, creating a scalable design system, simplifying onboarding and settings, introducing stronger UX practices, and helping the company connect product decisions to customer behavior and business outcomes.
At a Glance
Role
Director of User Experience
Scope
Webgility Online, onboarding, settings, design system, product UI, account portal, website, marketing touchpoints, AI assistant, customer research, and UX process
Primary Product Focus
Webgility Online, the company’s modern SaaS platform
Product Context
Webgility also had a legacy desktop product, but my primary focus was the online app and the broader customer experience around it
Primary Customers
SMB ecommerce sellers using QuickBooks Online, typically around $500K–$5M in annual revenue
Partners
Product, engineering, customer success, sales, marketing, leadership, and users
Outcomes
Helped improve trial-to-paid conversion from 15% to 30% within the 14-day trial period while creating a more modern, consistent, and scalable product experience.
Business Impact
15% to 30% Trial-to-Paid Conversion Lift
Improved the onboarding experience so more trial users reached the product’s value moment within the 14-day trial period.
Scalable Design System Across Product and Web
Created a shared design foundation that unified Webgility Online, the account management portal, and the website.
Faster Design-to-Development Workflow
Reusable components reduced the need for high-fidelity redesign work on every feature and allowed more work to move from wireframes into development with less handholding.
More Consistent Customer Experience
Modernized buttons, links, typography, tables, dashboards, forms, and interaction patterns across disconnected customer-facing experiences.
Simplified Technical Settings
Introduced a clearer IFTTT-style structure for complex settings so ecommerce sellers could better understand how store and accounting rules worked together.
Shipped AI Assistant Experience
Helped design and launch an in-app AI assistant that supported order, sales, product, inventory, and troubleshooting workflows.
The Challenge
Webgility Online created value, but users had to work too hard to see it.
Once users connected QuickBooks, connected a store, saw orders flow in, and posted an order, the value became clear. The challenge was helping them reach that moment faster.
Each accounting and store connection had its own flow. Settings were massive, deeply nested, and difficult to understand. The app assumed customers understood technical concepts like API configurations, sync rules, accounting mappings, and posting logic. But most Webgility customers were SMB ecommerce sellers, not technical operators.
The broader experience was also fragmented. Webgility Online, the account management portal, and the website looked and behaved like separate products. Inside the app, designers were creating new UI patterns for each feature, which led to inconsistent navigation, tables, buttons, links, forms, and page structures.
The challenge was not just to clean up the interface. It was to bring structure to the product experience, create a shared design foundation, simplify technical workflows, and help the company build stronger UX habits around real customer behavior.
The Customer
Webgility’s core online customer was an SMB ecommerce seller using QuickBooks Online.
They sold through channels like Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart, WooCommerce, and other marketplaces. Some were larger companies, but many were small businesses trying to keep orders, products, sales, and financial data organized without adding manual accounting overhead.
They did not want to learn how APIs, sync logic, or accounting mappings worked. They wanted confidence that Webgility would connect to their systems, pull in the right order data, match products correctly, and post clean information into QuickBooks. The real user need was trust.
If Webgility could help sellers connect their store, see their orders, and successfully post an order to QuickBooks, the value became clear.
My Role
I led UX strategy and product design direction for Webgility Online, working across product, engineering, customer success, sales, marketing, leadership, and users.
My role included modernizing the product UI, defining the design system, simplifying onboarding and settings workflows, guiding AI assistant concepts, reviewing FullStory behavior, leading customer research, creating UX readouts for leadership, and helping establish stronger design practices inside the company.
I also helped modernize the broader customer-facing experience across product, web, and marketing touchpoints.
How I Created Clarity
Webgility needed more than better screens. It needed a clearer way to understand users, evaluate friction, and make product decisions.
I used FullStory, customer interviews, usability testing, and validation sessions to uncover where users struggled and where the product created confusion. I then shared voice-of-customer readouts with leadership and cross-functional teams so product decisions could be grounded in real customer behavior.
I also introduced journey mapping, LBGUPS, regular design critiques, and stronger product/design/development feedback loops, helping the company move from assumption-driven decisions toward a more customer-centered product process.
What We Changed
We modernized the product and brand experience.
Webgility’s product UI had become visually dated and inconsistent. The app leaned heavily on brand colors, which made interaction patterns harder to understand. Buttons, links, headings, tables, and page structures did not always behave consistently.
I helped separate brand expression from product usability. The updated UI used a cleaner visual system, stronger hierarchy, more consistent interaction patterns, and a more modern product feel.
That modernization extended beyond the app. Customer-facing materials, website updates, presentations, ads, and tradeshow graphics all moved toward a more consistent Webgility experience.
We built a scalable design system.
The product team did not have a shared design system or component library, so each new feature often introduced new UI decisions. That created inconsistency for users and unnecessary friction for designers and developers.
I directed the creation of a practical design system for Webgility Online, focused on the core components the product used every day: navigation, forms, tables, dashboards, typography, spacing, and interaction patterns.
Once the foundation was in place, the front-end team implemented it across Webgility Online, the account management portal, and the website. This created a more connected customer experience and reduced the need for high-fidelity design work on every feature because reusable patterns were already available.
We simplified onboarding around the value moment.
Trial users needed to reach the moment where Webgility proved itself: connect QuickBooks, connect a store, see orders appear, and post an order into QuickBooks.
Using FullStory, we studied how users moved through setup, where they slowed down, and where they reached their “aha” moment. One clear insight was that users were willing to buy once they saw that the product could successfully move real order data into QuickBooks.
We focused onboarding work around helping users reach that proof point faster, reducing confusion in setup, and making the path from connection to value easier to understand.
This work helped improve trial-to-paid conversion from 15% to 30% within the 14-day trial period.
We redesigned complex settings using an IFTTT-style model.
Settings were one of the most confusing parts of the app. Users would try to post an order, run into an issue, go into settings, make a change, try again, and still not understand how the system was configured.
The problem was structure. Settings were deeply nested, visually flat, and difficult to understand. Users could change one setting without understanding how it affected the options below it.
I introduced an IFTTT-style framework that made the logic easier to follow: if this happens in the store, then this should happen in QuickBooks. Parent selections controlled the options below them, creating clearer hierarchy and more predictable relationships between settings.
We also added more useful tooltips and guidance so customers could understand what each setting actually did without needing technical support.
We shipped an AI assistant for ecommerce and accounting workflows.
One of my final Webgility projects was an AI assistant designed to help users complete tasks faster inside the product.
Users could click an AI button to open a sidebar, choose from suggested quick actions, or type a request like viewing PayPal orders, finding product information, troubleshooting an issue, or asking when inventory might run out.
The assistant supported order, sales, product, inventory, and troubleshooting workflows. If users hit a wall, the experience could guide them toward support.
Because the assistant used the design system, we were able to prototype and design the experience quickly while keeping it aligned with the rest of the product.
We made UX a more visible part of the company.
A major part of the work was helping Webgility see UX as more than UI cleanup. Through research readouts, shared customer feedback, design critiques, and cross-functional partnership, UX became more connected to how the company understood friction, onboarding, and the business impact of product decisions.
Why It Mattered
Webgility’s customers were not trying to become accounting automation experts. They were trying to run ecommerce businesses.
They needed to trust that orders, products, sales, inventory, and financial data would move correctly between their stores and QuickBooks. Every confusing setup step, unclear setting, inconsistent interface pattern, or failed posting moment created doubt.
By modernizing the product experience, simplifying technical workflows, creating a scalable design system, and grounding decisions in real customer behavior, we helped make Webgility Online easier to understand, easier to trust, and easier to buy.
The product worked. The opportunity was helping users reach the moment where they could see it working.