Daraz: Rebuilding the New-User Front Door for 3.5M Daily Users
Role
Regional Product Manager
Timeline
2023 - 2024
Scope
5 Countries (PK, BD, LK, NP, MM)
Scale
0M
Daily homepage users
Engagement
+0%
New-user CTR
Conversion
+0%
New-user CR
01. Product Context
Daraz's homepage was the front door for South Asia's largest e-commerce platform. For new users, that first session had to answer four questions quickly: what can I buy, can I trust it, what is worth clicking, and why should I come back?
My work focused on the regional buyer-domain experience across Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Myanmar, with special attention to new-user onboarding, homepage clarity, and sale readiness for 11.11.
Audience
New marketplace shoppers
Day-zero users arriving with low trust, limited intent signals, and little familiarity with Daraz.
Surface
Homepage and onboarding
The first product surface had to teach, reassure, collect intent, and move users toward shopping.
Business moment
11.11 readiness
The work had to hold up during the biggest sale period while serving five regional markets.
02. The Core Problem
Day-zero users were overwhelmed, cautious, and invisible to the recommendation engine.
The homepage had too many competing modules, research showed first-time shoppers were anxious about trust and delivery, and the Just For You module had no user-interest signal to work with on the first visit.
Cognitive overload
Seven homepage modules created too many competing decisions for users who had not yet formed shopping intent.
Trust deficit
Research across Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Myanmar surfaced anxiety around fraud, delivery, quality, and returns.
Cold-start recommendations
The Just For You feed was a revenue driver, but brand-new users had no behavior history to personalize against.
03. Product initiatives that moved Daraz forward
Product Strategy
Three connected moves: simplify the homepage, foreground trust, and turn onboarding into Just For You activation.
Simplify
Cut the homepage down to fewer, more purposeful modules so new users could scan without friction.
Reassure
Move trust builders such as COD, free delivery, and returns into the first-session experience.
Personalize
Use onboarding to collect zero-party interest data and activate recommendation quality earlier.
Homepage Simplification
Reduced new-user cognitive load by cutting clutter and clarifying the first-session hierarchy.
Homepage Simplification
Reduced new-user cognitive load by cutting clutter and clarifying the first-session hierarchy.
Product decision
The old homepage asked new shoppers to process too much too soon. We tested a simpler structure that preserved commercial value while making the first screen easier to understand.
Move 01
Reduce modules
A/B tested a simpler homepage structure by cutting seven cluttered modules down to three focused sections.
Move 02
Prioritize first-session clarity
Reserved the top of the experience for search, trust signals, categories, and high-confidence entry points.
Move 03
Protect commercial surfaces
Kept campaign and deal modules visible, but made them work within a clearer new-user hierarchy.
Trust-Forward Homepage
Made the first shopping surface feel safer to try by bringing COD, delivery, vouchers, and buyer protection into the homepage experience.
Trust-Forward Homepage
Made the first shopping surface feel safer to try by bringing COD, delivery, vouchers, and buyer protection into the homepage experience.
New-user homepage
Research across five markets showed that new users needed reassurance before they were ready to browse or buy.
Trust signal
Cash on Delivery
Made payment safety visible early for users worried about paying before receiving goods.
Trust signal
Free delivery and vouchers
Reduced first-order hesitation with a concrete new-user reward and delivery message.
Trust signal
Return confidence
Used buyer protections to address fears around product quality, fraud, and post-purchase risk.
Interest-Based Onboarding for Just For You
Used onboarding to collect first-party interest signals so the Just For You feed could become relevant before browsing history existed.
Interest-Based Onboarding for Just For You
Used onboarding to collect first-party interest signals so the Just For You feed could become relevant before browsing history existed.
Why this mattered
New users arrived without behavioral history, which made personalization difficult on day zero. We used onboarding to ask for shopping interests directly, then passed those signals into the Just For You experience so recommendations could start with intent instead of waiting for clicks.
Step 01
Ask for interests
Let users select preferred categories during onboarding to create an immediate personalization signal.
Step 02
Explain the value
Positioned notification and offer prompts around deals, discounts, and useful shopping moments rather than generic app engagement.
Step 03
Reward completion
Used a free-delivery voucher to make onboarding feel immediately useful and reduce first-order hesitation.
Step 04
Activate Just For You
Fed selected interests into the recommendation experience so new users saw more relevant products earlier in the journey.
11.11 Launch Operations
Coordinated homepage changes around Daraz's biggest sale event without losing regional coherence.
11.11 Launch Operations
Coordinated homepage changes around Daraz's biggest sale event without losing regional coherence.
Operating constraint
Homepage work at Daraz scale was not only a design problem. It required timing, stakeholder alignment, market localization, and launch discipline so experiments and sale modules could coexist during peak traffic.
Coordination
Five markets
Balanced local market needs across Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Myanmar.
Delivery
High-traffic launch window
Planned homepage changes around 11.11 so experiments and sale surfaces could operate reliably.
Governance
Regional alignment
Kept the buyer-domain roadmap coherent while coordinating with commercial and operating teams.
04. Outcome
The new-user homepage became less cluttered and more purposeful.
By combining simplification, trust cues, and onboarding-based interest capture, the experience helped day-zero users move from uncertainty toward product discovery faster.
The work produced a measurable lift in new-user engagement and conversion while giving the regional team a clearer product structure for 11.11.
Increased new-user CTR by 10% through a clearer first-session experience.
Increased new-user conversion by 3% by reducing friction and improving first-order confidence.
Turned onboarding into a direct input for personalization and recommendation quality.
05. Execution & Responsibilities
Ownership
As Regional Product Manager for the Buyer Domain, I owned the homepage roadmap, led cross-border UX research, and translated qualitative user pain points into product and algorithmic interventions.
Delivery mode
I worked across product, commercial, design, research, and market teams to ship high-traffic experiments while preserving launch readiness for major campaign moments.