Merchant Dashboard & Loyalty System

The product & my role

Hypeal is a Shopify loyalty platform backed by ABN AMRO and Techstars '23. I joined as the sole designer right before launch.

The app existed but the merchant setup experience needed serious work: confusing steps, no sense of progress, and a card creation flow that could be cleaner. On top of the product work, the team needed branded card mockups to show potential merchants what their VIP program could look like.

Understanding the merchant

Before changing anything, I looked at how competitors handle this. Smile.io, LoyaltyLion, Rivo, and Joy all had the same issue: too much data, not enough clarity. Simple tasks like creating a loyalty card were buried under dashboards full of charts.

Working with the founding team and their early merchant contacts, three things stood out:

Merchants don't have time to learn your tool

Most Shopify store owners do everything themselves. If your dashboard needs a tutorial, it's already lost them.

Brand matters more than features

Merchants wanted loyalty cards that looked like their own brand, not a third-party plugin.

The existing flows had friction

Several steps in the app were confusing or unnecessary. Users could finish tasks, but not without second-guessing themselves.

Competitive Audit — Setup Flow Patterns

Smile.io

Long wizard-based setup with many configuration screens before merchants see any results

LoyaltyLion

Setup requires heavy configuration and support involvement; no self-serve onboarding path

Rivo

Simpler onboarding but limited customization during setup; merchants must configure later

Joy

Clean interface but setup flow lacks progress indicators or completion state

Gaps identified → Design decisions

No progress indicators

None of the four apps showed merchants how far along they were in setup or what came next

→ Visible stepper with completion states

Everything on one screen

Configuration options competed for attention with no hierarchy or separation between steps

→ Focused single-task screens

Generic welcome screens

First-time merchants landed on dashboards with no orientation or clear starting point

→ Value-oriented onboarding

No platform-native patterns

Setup flows ignored Shopify’s own Polaris conventions that merchants already know

→ Built on Polaris Setup Guide pattern

Competitive audit — setup flow patterns across Smile.io, LoyaltyLion, Rivo & Joy

What I Designed

Welcome Screen

The first thing merchants see. Three clear value props, one “Let's start” button. No confusion about what Hypeal does or where to begin.

Dashboard Overview

Revenue, active members, and a customer table with loyalty tiers. The metrics merchants check first, all in one view.

Setup Guide & Tutorials

Redesigned the full setup experience: clear steps, progress tracking, and embedded tutorials that guide merchants through cross-platform tasks.

Hypeal setup guide — 3 numbered steps before completion

Hypeal setup guide — all steps completed with checkmarks

VIP gated offer setup — tutorial guiding merchants through Shopify's Discounts panel

Card Creation Flow Improvements

Cleaned up the existing card creation experience, simplifying the interface and making the steps more intuitive for merchants building their first VIP card.

Activation Flow

The end-to-end flow from completing setup to going live on a Shopify store.

Component Library

Buttons, steppers, date pickers, forms, toggles, navigation, and pagination. The system that kept everything consistent and gave the dev team a reliable reference for building.

Impact

20+

Screens designed for the merchant experience

Reusable components built

3 months

Sole designer, startup speed

Redesigned merchant setup flow with clear progress tracking and guided tutorials
Designed welcome experience, dashboard overview, and guided tutorials
Improved the card creation flow for better usability
Built component library adopted by dev team for all future features
Delivered everything in 3 months at startup speed

“You get what we want fast”
— Stakeholder feedback