Overview
Every seller on noon starts here — creating their store, submitting documents,
passing KYC review, and eventually going live. For years this funnel had significant
drop-off at every stage: confusing document flows, opaque review status, no
in-context guidance, and a KYC bottleneck that drove the highest complaint volume
on the platform.
I led the UX redesign of the onboarding flow: store creation, LE document
submission, approval status visibility, and in-flow seller guidance. The work
also involved service design — surfacing and fixing the process gaps that no
amount of UI polish could hide.
+96.9%
More UAE sellers reaching live YoY
1,032 vs 524 — Jan 2026 cohort
+21.6pp
UAE Store → LE Approved conversion
31.5% → 53.1% (Q1 YoY)
+9%
CSAT improvement
3.03 → 3.31, detractors −12pp
The Problem
Sellers were dropping out at every stage of the funnel
The onboarding flow had been built incrementally and showed it. Each stage had its
own friction — and the cumulative effect was that the majority of sellers who
created a store never made it to live.
-
📄
Confusing document submission
The LE (Legal Entity) approval flow had unclear field labels, missing guidance on
required document formats, and no feedback when something was wrong — leading to
repeated resubmissions and long wait times.
-
🕐
Opaque KYC review status
Sellers had no visibility into where their application was in review. The KYC
bottleneck was the loudest complaint in Q4 2025 — multi-week waits with no status
update, and agents giving conflicting information.
-
🔍
Guidance existed — but wasn't discoverable
Sellers rated negatively because they "didn't know where to apply" even though
all relevant links and instructions already existed on the platform. The gap
wasn't missing content — it was surfacing it at the right moment in the flow.
-
📞
Poor support reachability
Sellers needed human contact but the platform funnelled them into email-only support.
Free-text feedback showed sellers wanting callbacks and direct contact — a recurring
complaint across all markets.
Process & Key Decisions
Four design moves that shifted the funnel
Decision 01
Redesign the LE submission flow around clarity, not completeness
The document submission form tried to explain everything upfront — a wall of
instructions that sellers skipped. The redesign restructured it around progressive
disclosure: show what's needed, when it's needed, with inline validation rather
than end-of-form error dumps. Field labels were rewritten to match how sellers
actually describe their documents, not how the system categorised them.
↑ Store → LE Approved rate: 31.5% → 53.1% (+21.6pp) in UAE · Q1 YoY
Decision 02
Make review status visible and specific — not just "pending"
Sellers in KYC review had no idea where they were or what to expect. The redesign
introduced a visible review status tracker with named stages, estimated timelines,
and a clear explanation of what happens next. Alongside the UI, an automated LE
aging escalation process was introduced — replacing a manual, error-prone workflow
where applications could sit unreviewed for weeks.
↑ CSAT: 3.03 → 3.31 (+9%) · Detractors: 45% → 33% (−12pp) · KYC complaints largely disappeared in Q1 2026
Decision 03
Surface guidance in-flow — don't send sellers to a help centre
The insight from seller feedback was sharp: the problem wasn't that guidance
didn't exist, it was that sellers never found it when they needed it. The solution
was in-context — inline checklists, progress nudges, and contextual help at the
specific step where sellers were getting stuck. Rather than a "Help" link in the
nav, guidance appeared as part of the flow.
Directly addresses the top discoverability complaint from seller CSAT free-text
Decision 04
Build a personalised seller dashboard to anchor the post-signup experience
After store creation, sellers had no clear "what's next." The dashboard gave them
a personalised home — outstanding actions, document status, onboarding checklist,
and a seller guide tailored to their store type. This reduced the disorientation
that caused many sellers to abandon the process after initial sign-up.
The Work
Key screens
📸 Store creation + doc submission — export from Figma Onboarding file
Store Creation & Document Submission
Redesigned LE submission flow with progressive disclosure, inline field guidance, and clear document requirements — the flow that drove the +21.6pp LE approval rate.
📸 Seller Dashboard — export from Figma Onboarding file
Personalised Seller Dashboard
Post-signup home showing outstanding actions, approval status, onboarding checklist, and a tailored seller guide — reducing the abandonment that happened when sellers didn't know what to do next.
📸 Seller Guide — export from Figma Onboarding file
In-Flow Seller Guide
Contextual guidance surfaced at the point of need — not in a separate help centre. The design response to the "guidance exists but isn't discoverable" finding.
Impact & Outcomes
The funnel moved — measurably
All figures are from the noon Merchant Onboarding consolidated report (May 2026), comparing Q1 2026 to Q1 2025.
+96.9%
↑ YoY
UAE stores reaching live — Jan 2026 cohort (1,032 vs 524)
Jan 2026 cohort, fully mature
+49.2%
↑ YoY
Total stores going live in UAE — Q1 2026 vs Q1 2025 (2,414 vs 1,618)
Q1 2026 vs Q1 2025
53.1%
+21.6pp
Store → LE Approved conversion in UAE (was 31.5%)
Q1 YoY
39.1%
+14.5pp
Store → QC Passed conversion in UAE (was 24.6%)
Q1 YoY
3.31
+9%
CSAT score — Q1 2026 (was 3.03 in Q4 2025)
67 responses
−12pp
↓ Detractors
Detractor rate fell from 45% to 33% — KYC complaints largely disappeared
Q4 2025 → Q1 2026
KSA also showed strong improvement — store-to-live conversion went from 12.8% to 27.0%
(+14.1pp YoY), with stores live up 58.6%. Egypt improved conversion efficiency (12.0% vs 7.8%)
despite lower top-of-funnel volume.
What's next
The onboarding funnel improved — post-live is the new frontier
The data tells a clear story: more sellers are completing onboarding, but fewer
are making their first sale. In UAE, first-sale conversion declined from 16.1% to 10.9%
(−5.3pp), and LTV3 per store fell from AED 4,072 to AED 2,515 (−38%). The design
problem has shifted from "getting sellers live" to "getting live sellers selling."
Open design problems from the data
- Post-live seller visibility and discovery — organic visibility for long-tail sellers lags behind competitors
- Chinese-language seller UX — opaque rejection reasons, missing field labels (PRJ/ORG numbers), no CN-language support layer; drove CSAT to 2.79 in partial Q2 data
- First-sale conversion — onboarding is smoother but post-live monetisation support lags the funnel improvements
- Support reachability — sellers want callbacks and direct contact, not email-only; consistently the #1 pain point in free-text feedback