How we rebuilt the core admin experience for thousands of customers

Background

When I joined BigCommerce, the control panel was a daily pain point for thousands of merchants, but it had never been prioritized against feature work.

A design–engineering hackathon prototype finally caught P&E leadership’s attention, and when an engineering team became available, we had already done the legwork, so got a green light to redesign it.

My role

  • Drove efforts for end-to-end redesign of the BigCommerce control panel (e.g., guiding EU designers, coordinating CPX team)

  • Created alignment across Product, Engineering, Design and Business Development

  • Helped the team with role definition, design of the IA, rollout plan and retro

  • Set groundwork for in-product feedback modal, used to opt-out feedback collection

  • Directed team towards high quality execution and ran design reviews with cross functional and senior leadership to ensure visibility and buy-in

  • Guided stakeholder alignment with partners like TD Bank

Outcomes & impact

~50%

improvement in NPS (for usability & UI over other tracked areas)

~$Xm*

Revenue from TD Bank co-branding partnership

*private information

ISO 9001

Quality certification earned based on auditor assessment of user involvement

94%

Customers who did not opt out after trying the new experience

100%

Users who migrated to the new experience (after iterations and rollout completed)

~26%

Reduction in navigation-related support tickets

High friction problems

  • Poor wayfinding: Primary nav disappeared on deeper pages, causing users to get lost

  • UI felt old and untrustworthy: Merchants described the interface as “bulky” and outdated

  • Search was hidden and unhelpful: Poor placement and limited results

  • Help created friction: Hard to find, opened in-line and blocked navigation

  • No ownership: Core utilities had no team steward, leading to fragmented, inconsistent UX over time

Proactively drove a vision

  • Control panel redesign had not been prioritized, despite clear UX issues and no team owning it

  • As a design team we took the opportunity to prototype a new navigation concept in a hackathon - it captivated our VP of Engineering, who wanted to build it.

  • I encouraged my team to build a coded, extensible vision prototype (white-labeling, themes, RTL) and used this to secure leadership support for the redesign.

Redesign of settings IA

Prioritizing immediate IA pain

  • Merchants were confused by six different “settings/store/storefront” sections with overlapping labels and no clear structure.

  • User interviews and card sorting showed that people naturally grouped settings into a few clear categories—far simpler than our existing IA.

  • Consolidated everything into a single, categorized Settings page with clearer labels and search, removing major friction and setting the stage for the broader redesign.

Team is staffed - let’s kick it off!

I partnered with a PM Director to form the CPX team, then ran workshops to align Engineering around user pain points and establish a clear rollout strategy.

Two competing designs

  • Core tasks (like Orders) and utilities (like Search and Help) were mixed together in the same nav space, creating confusion and poor wayfinding.

  • Usability tests showed that users understood the experience far better when utilities were separated from core navigation categories.

  • Built two coded prototypes—with and without a top bar—and tested them over three weeks. Version B, which split utilities into a top bar, clearly won for clarity and ease of navigation.

“This navigation makes a whole lot more sense… things that relate to the store are separate from user settings.”

Layout & interactions finalized

  • We refined the nav so chevrons opened sections and labels took users directly to pages.

  • Utilities like search, help, notifications, and store management were separated into clear dropdowns with familiar enterprise interaction patterns.

Visual polish & build

  • The Control Panel’s visual design felt dated, and new iconography raised concerns about consistency across teams.

  • Elevating visual polish required both stronger iconography and clear alignment between Design and Engineering on system standards.

  • Refreshed the top-level nav with clean, Material-inspired icons, facilitated alignment between teams, and updated the design system to support the new components—resulting in a scalable, consistent, and more polished UI.

Navigating partner requirements

  • TD Bank depended on a co-branded version of the old Control Panel, making the redesign a high-risk transition for a key partner.

  • Proactive communication and tailoring the experience for white-label needs would turn a potential friction point into alignment.

  • I partnered with BizDev and Product to update documentation, align on timelines, and refine the UI for white-label support—ultimately securing TD Bank’s full enthusiasm for the new design.

Getting to 100% adoption

  • We needed a full, frictionless migration—no users left on the old design.

  • Transparent communication and a safe, temporary escape hatch built trust and give us real-time feedback to improve rapidly.

  • Rolled out a guided tour, added a short-term opt-out with feedback, and iterated fast to ensure a seamless full transition.

They wanted it darker

  • Users wanted dark mode, but our legacy system couldn’t support a full dark theme.

  • A lightweight, high-impact improvement could both validate the redesign direction and show customers we were listening.

  • Shipped a nav-only dark mode, tested color options with customers, and added a simple toggle—creating a win that built trust and momentum for the redesign, and for BigCommerce.

Reflections & learnings

This project showed me the power of illustrating a vision early—even when it’s not on the roadmap. The launch became our model for high-quality releases, helped secure ISO 9001 approval, and strengthened trust in design’s ability to deliver thoughtful, user-centered solutions at scale.

The Control panel redesign demonstrated that we could apply user-centered processes to deliver high quality, high-impact solutions.

To share what made it successful, I ran a retro with the core team and wrote an internal blog post to share these learnings with the wider org:

7 principles for quality releases:

  • Lead with user insight

  • Plan intentionally & engineer for scale

  • Use/evolve design standards

  • Dogfood early & often

  • Collaborate deeply

  • Test continuously

  • Iterate fast after launch