Optimizing Wayfair Ads Dashboard
Making campaign performance understandable and actionable
UX Research, UXUI Design, Product Ideation, Product Strategy
The Challenge
The platform showed metrics, but not meaning
The existing dashboard surfaced campaign details and performance metrics, but it did not give sellers a clear way to understand campaign goals or assess campaign health.
1
2
3
4
This also created a second-order operational problem:
Why does it matter?
Low Clarity Created Costs on Both Sides
Suppliers
Confusion and Low Confident
Wayfair
Operational Drag and Missed Growth
This limited scalable growth and created avoidable operational burden, and led to lost revenue.
Research
Research approach
We started by looking both outward and inward.
Outward
First, we reviewed campaign creation and management patterns across major platforms, including Google, Meta, Amazon, Walmart, Instagram, and Carousell. The goal was to understand common ad workflow structures and identify UX patterns that reduced friction for advertisers.
In our review of ad platforms, Google Ads distinguished itself with a range of UX features that effectively support sellers throughout the campaign workflow.
Goal Optimization During Campaign Launch
While launching and setting up the the new campaign, users can optimize for the goals they want to achieve
Campaign Preview for Advertiser Assurance
Previewing what the campaign will look like may give assurance to advertisers on what to expect
Best-Practice Guidance Throughout Campaign Creation
Google Ads uses contextual nudges and recommendations to guide users toward best practices and improve campaign effectiveness.
Inward
Second, we built an understanding of how Wayfair suppliers manage campaigns and prioritize advertising goals.
High-Touch Vendor Growth Model
Wayfair’s growth model relies on SAMs and SMEs to directly support vendors, drive sustainable ad growth, and build long-term relationships through multifaceted account management.
Multi-Product Campaign Complexity
Ad campaigns often include multiple products with different goals, adding complexity to performance tracking.
Product-Related Goals
Suppliers primarily use advertising to drive product outcomes rather than brand awareness
Launching new products
Promoting bestsellers
Clearing excess inventory,
Ideation
Problem Framing
Based on the findings, we reframed the challenge into three linked UX problems.
3 Key Problem Statments
01
Lack of Categorization Based on Seller Goals
Sellers couldn't define clear goals when launching a campaign, making it difficult to measure success.
02
Difficulty Understanding Campaign Performance
Campaign metrics were presented in an overwhelming and aggregated way, with no clear structure.
03
Lack of Clarity on Campaign Optimization
Sellers didn’t know what to fix or where to focus their efforts.
Framing the Design Opportunity
Based on the problems we identified, we brainstormed a range of possible solutions, then used the RICE score system to evaluate them against key criteria to prioritize the most effective and realistic options.
What Is The RICE Score?
Reach
Who does the solution affect?
Impact
How many problems does the solution solve?
Confidence
How confident is the team that the solution will solve the problem?
Effort
How much effort is needed to productize the idea?
RICE-Based Solution Evaluation
Problem + Solution + Impact
The UX opportunity framing gave us three clean product strategy:
01 Goal Alignment for Campaigns
02 Campaign Performance Visibility
03 Automated Campaign Optimization
How would the prioritization and optimization work?
Building a Root-Cause Diagnosis Framework
Designing for diagnosis, not just detection
We designed a root-cause framework that mapped campaign performance into clear diagnostic paths. Campaigns were first grouped by performance, then broken down into likely issues, each tied to a probable cause and recommended next step.
Prioritizing the Right Insights
From raw metrics to prioritized signals
Instead of treating all metrics as equal, the system would surface the most business-relevant and actionable issues first, helping sellers focus their attention where intervention was most likely to drive impact.
Solution
4 Potential Benefits for Wayfair
Improved campaign metrics through automated promotion insights
Sellers spend more by acting on data-driven insights
Reduces workload for Ad campaign managers
Possible monetization of the diagnosis feature set
Sequence of Implementation
The UX opportunity framing gave us a clean product strategy:
1
2
3
