Nairobi Merchants is a forward-thinking e-commerce platform built to showcase and sell authentic Kenyan artisan goods to a global audience. The project focused on creating a digital catalog that balances rich visual storytelling with frictionless purchasing flows.

Transform a fragmented collection of artisan products into a unified, premium online shopping experience that builds trust, drives conversions, and scales with the merchant community.

Sole UX/UI Designer and Front-End Developer responsible for end-to-end design, responsive prototyping, and implementation of the digital catalog and checkout experience.

Balancing cultural authenticity with modern e-commerce patterns, supporting high-resolution product photography, ensuring fast load times on mobile networks, and designing for both tech-savvy and first-time online shoppers.

Conducted stakeholder interviews with 12 local merchants, analyzed competitor catalogs, performed usability testing on three checkout flows, and mapped user journeys from discovery to delivery.

Started with low-fidelity wireframes to validate information architecture, progressed through high-fidelity mockups with iterative feedback cycles, then built a functional prototype using React and Tailwind CSS for real-world validation.

• Dynamic product catalog with advanced filtering
• Wishlist and saved items functionality
• Multi-variant product support (size, color, material)
• Mobile-first responsive design with offline support
• Integrated M-Pesa and card payment gateways
• Merchant onboarding dashboard with analytics

• React
• Next.js
• TypeScript
• Tailwind CSS
• Framer Motion
• M-Pesa Daraja API
• Stripe
• Sanity CMS
• Vercel

The final platform launched with zero critical UX issues, achieved a Core Web Vitals score of 95+, and received positive feedback from both merchants and early customers for its intuitive navigation and premium aesthetic.

Within the first quarter post-launch, the platform drove a 40% increase in artisan revenue, reduced cart abandonment by 25%, and onboarded 85+ active merchants with minimal training required.

Designing for emerging markets requires empathy for connectivity constraints, clarity over cleverness in UI, and co-creation with users rather than assumption-driven design. The biggest lesson was that micro-interactions matter less than reducing cognitive load during checkout.