Context
Our client, a prominent e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, serves over 160 million monthly active users. Operating in one of the world’s most competitive digital markets, the company faces intense pressure from rivals offering aggressive pricing, expansive logistics networks, and highly localized user experiences.
To stand out from competitors, the client aimed to create a seamless and intuitive user journey in their app right from the very first interaction, by proactively understanding users’ online purchase behaviour and identifying pain points of customers in the Southeast Asian region. Amidst a fierce eye-for-eye competition, the customary marketing, advertising and operational efforts were simply not sufficient to compete and win.
That was when UXArmy was brought into the picture.
With in-house researchers and designers overloaded with tight deadlines, attending important meetings and executing critical research, there was a shortage of resources for heavy lifting work in research like finding the right participants for research, scheduling the participants for interviews, doing technical checks, quality assurance of their responses, translating research scripts into multiple languages, payment of incentives, etc.. To fill in for the research operations work and streamlining their research processes, UXArmy allocated competent research staff to bring speed, structure, and efficiency to our client’s user research efforts.
The UXArmy research team worked closely with the client’s product team to design and execute multiple lean usability tests. Through multi-language unmoderated usability testing, rapid participant recruitment, automated translation and transcription, and fast-turnaround insight synthesis, UXArmy enabled the client to run research effectively across multiple diverse markets in Southeast Asia – Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, with the client’s team taking strategic calls and subject matter expert’s position in the research execution.
UXArmy Filling Gaps in Situations of Resource Bottlenecks
Over the course of our 6+ year collaboration with the client, UXArmy regularly engages with the client’s internal stakeholders to identify and address a wide range of user experience challenges. At critical moments like campaign launches where speed, precision, and cross-market insight are essential, the client depends upon UXArmy to quickly gather user insights and fine-tune those campaigns.
Among the several projects UXArmy has taken up with the client, the following onboarding issue stands out as a clear example of the tangible impact we have delivered.
The client’s product team had developed a new onboarding flow for their app. Login and authentication were identified as a silent source of friction, one that could quietly but significantly impact user acquisition and retention. If left unaddressed, this friction risked increasing drop-off rates during onboarding, eroding user trust, and ultimately reducing the effectiveness of costly marketing efforts aimed at driving app downloads.
UXArmy uncovered the struggles that customers face with the current login/sign-up process:
- “The duration I have to wait for the OTP (One-Time Password) makes me upset. Why should I wait this long? The code should be sent quicker.”
- “Logging in to the app can be quite inconvenient sometimes, this could affect my motivation to make a purchase at that moment. Would prefer easier options to login.”
- “It would be so much easier if I could just login with my Google or Apple account. Or Face ID? I don’t want to deal with passwords or OTPs every single time.”
Internally, the product team was actively exploring ways to address login-related friction by testing different approaches to authentication. They were evaluating hypotheses around optimal login preferences, the most effective communication channels for OTP delivery, and how users interacted with the platform’s newly introduced one-tap Quick Login feature – all with the main objective of creating a smoother, more intuitive onboarding experience.
However, with tight product development timelines and growing negative feedback from internal quality assurance, product managers raised concerns about potential UX pitfalls that might not surface through internal quality assurance testing alone.
Compounding the challenge was a lack of internal bandwidth: the client’s UX team was already stretched thin across multiple projects, and there were insufficient resources or manpower to plan, recruit, and execute a multi-country usability study in-house. Especially not at the speed the business needed answers from the product team.
The key challenges: validate assumptions, uncover UX friction, and deliver actionable insights across three diverse markets in terms of preferences and user behavior (Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia), all within a 2-week sprint.
Their goals were clear:
- Understand when users prefer to log in during the shopping journey
- Identify usability pain points in the authentication process (OTP, login UI)
- Evaluate the clarity, speed, and trustworthiness of the new ‘Quick Login’ experience
- Uncover country-specific preferences for communication channels (e.g. LINE, Viber, WhatsApp)
Traditional research methods (e.g. moderated interviews, lab testing, or in-house recruitment) were too slow due to data compliance restrictions and resource-intensive, and the product timeline could not afford a 2 to 3 weeks research cycle.
The UXArmy research team stepped in, handling the end-to-end research process, and delivering high-quality, comparative insights across three markets and 4 languages in less than 10 working days, without compromising on depth, rigor, or speed.
By synthesizing user feedback across markets, UXArmy narrowed down multiple concepts to the one that resonated most – a ‘Quick Login’ feature that reduced friction and aligned with users’ need for speed and convenience:
- “I really like how fast I can login like this. Just one tap and I’m in. No waiting around for an OTP or typing anything in.”
- “I’ve had issues with OTPs in the past but this login method feels way more reliable.”
- “Quick login is a small thing, but it makes a big difference. No hassle and it is more seamless.”
UXArmy’s Approach
To meet the timeline and research depth required, UXArmy designed and executed a remote unmoderated usability study across Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia, with a sample of 36 participants (12 per market), balanced across demographics and user behaviours.
- Strategic collaboration: UXArmy researchers worked directly with the client to refine tasks to match real-world shopping behavior. Tasks we suggested included login decision-making, OTP verification, and exploring Quick Login. All while capturing first reactions, points of confusion, and user expectations.
- Rapid participant recruitment and screening: Recruitment and screening were completed in just 2 working days, thanks to UXArmy’s rigorously verified user panel and localized screening protocols tailored to each market. The UXArmy ResearchOps personnel ensured every participant met precise behavioral and demographic criteria aligned with the client’s target audience.
- Analysis and reporting within 3 days: UXArmy’s built-in translation and transcription capabilities accelerated cross-language analysis, enabling researchers to quickly understand user sentiment and behavior across diverse markets without delay or loss of context. The team began synthesis immediately after data collection. In just 3 working days, they produced a comprehensive insights deck (with quotes, charts, and visuals), key breakdown of country-specific patterns, and priority recommendations based on usability issues and design friction.
Results & Impact
Within just 5 working days, UXArmy showcased the ability to deliver research-driven insights that directly influence product decisions, with significant business implication:
- Prevented large-scale user drop-off by uncovering 3 critical friction points in the Quick Login feature, mitigating potential churn risks that could have impacted millions of users at the point of entry.
- Increased projected user adoption by recommending culturally attuned login alternatives tailored to local behaviors, forecasted to improve onboarding completion rates by up to 15% across key Southeast Asian markets.
- Accelerated time-to-insight by over 60% across multiple Southeast Asian countries, reducing typical research timelines from 2 – 3 weeks to just 5 working days. This rapid turnaround, delivered every quarter throughout our 6+ year collaboration, has empowered the client’s product and design teams to make confident, user-driven decisions at speed, without compromising on localization accuracy or cross-market relevance.
From research design to recruitment and reporting of insights, every aspect was handled with speed, rigor, and cultural relevance. UXArmy’s agile research operations, active regional user panel, and dedicated research staff made it possible to deliver enterprise-level UX insights in startup timeframes.
In a region as diverse and fast-moving as Southeast Asia, onboarding cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach. UXArmy enabled this e-commerce leader to obtain actionable, market-specific insights that led to the reprioritization of 4 critical onboarding features, all within five working days, that will eventually shape user flows. These flows calibrated to other countries in Southeast Asia now affect over 160 million monthly active users.
If you are ready to run fast, conduct regionally-relevant research that delivers real results, UXArmy is here to help.y implemented. The design and product teams, alongside the UXArmy team, collaborated to develop ‘How Might We statements aimed at enhancing various aspects of the app and continue to make it more user-friendly.
