Bridging the Web2/Web3 Data Gap while Streamlining Onboarding

Salesforce is a leading CRM platform used by thousands of businesses. The emergence of Web3 technologies, such as blockchains, cryptowallets, and digital assets, presents new opportunities and challenges for companies. Some Salesforce customers have created custom Web3 solutions resulting in disconnected data landscapes. Salesforce Web3 aims to address this by integrating Web2 and Web3 user data, providing a holistic view of customer interactions. This integration would enable targeted marketing, community building, and individualized support to offer a complete and personalized view of shoppers for enhanced engagement.

The current Web3 user experiences pose significant challenges for Web2 shoppers, including usability and practical functionality. Onboarding shoppers into Web3, particularly explaining how identity and payments work, is a well-known business and UX challenge. To address this, I designed identity and payment solutions and guidelines for Salesforce Web3 customers to reduce shopper friction and ensure a smooth onboarding process.

I defined Salesforce Web3 UX success criteria focused on making onboarding easy for customers and shoppers. To understand the needs and goals of users, I created three personas but concentrated on the Shopper and the Merchandising Specialist. I developed user workflows with PM partners, drilling into the flows for connecting wallets for establishing identity and providing payment. I wireframed and prototyped various workflow and layout options for customers to offer to their users. Lastly, we utilized Salesforce's existing Flow platform to provide customers with a low-code tool for creating personalized, data-driven Web3 workflows.

Salesforce Web3 officially launched on March 15, 2023, following a successful Pilot program involving over 80 organizations, including government agencies and Fortune 500 companies across various industries. During the Pilot phase, companies like Mattel, Crown Royal, and Scotch&Soda achieved great success, selling 500K+ digital assets, engaging customers, and expanding their reach through loyalty programs and collaborations.

Platforms: Responsive Web
Disciplines: Design Strategy, Design Thinking, Information Architecture, Product Design, Web Design, Wireframing, Prototyping, Design Systems, Design Management, Project Management
Tools: Figma, FigJam, LucidChart, Google Slides, Affinity Photo

Over 150,000 large enterprises and SMBs run their business on Salesforce. Salesforce's CRM helps brands connect to customers, find prospects, close deals, and wow customers with exceptional service. It is a complete product suite with apps for every step of the customer journey, from lead to loyalty.

Considered the next generation of the internet, Web3 includes emerging technologies like blockchains, cryptocurrencies, digital assets, and cryptowallets that allow companies to engage new audiences and tap into first-party data to enhance shopper relationships and promote loyalty. For example, recent surveys reveal that nearly half (45%) of shoppers would be more interested in purchasing a digital asset if it came from their favorite brand. Moreover, 75% of buyers who have purchased a digital asset in the past say buying a brand's digital assets makes them more loyal to that company.

However, Web3 also introduces new business challenges for finding prospects, buying and selling goods, and identifying, supporting, and connecting with current customers. As a result, many of Salesforce's customers create bespoke solutions to enter the Web3 world. Yet, these custom Web3 data sources are not integrated with their existing Salesforce Web2 CRM data, resulting in a disconnected data landscape.

The Salesforce Web3 platform helps companies create, manage, and deploy digital assets in a trusted, scalable, and sustainable way. With Salesforce Web3, companies can connect with their customers in a whole new way by combining their Web2 and Web3 user data in Salesforce for a holistic view of how customers interact with their organization across traditional and emerging digital environments.

The core value proposition for our customers is that the Salesforce Web3 offering coordinates and aligns their Web2 and Web3 shopper data for physical and virtual products. As a result, the Salesforce Web3 platform provides these customers with a complete and personalized view of each of their shoppers, enabling targeted engagement in marketing and community building, as well as service and support.

Web3 UX Challenges and Opportunities

However, the existing Web3 user experiences are a monumental hurdle for current Web2 shoppers. "Concrete usability is one of the biggest challenges in moving blockchain past its wild-west phase. Using crypto... is still comparatively difficult. But more importantly, the broader Web3 ecosystem still lacks the practical functionality and UX to form the infrastructure that will replace Web2." [Entrepreneur] Specifically, onboarding shoppers into Web3 is an enormous, well-known business and UX challenge.

Two key onboarding topics for shoppers include explaining how identity and payments work in Web3. In the Web3 space, establishing identity and purchasing assets are tied to crypto wallets. The term "crypto wallets" is an excellent example of another hurdle for shoppers -- the new terminology introduced by Web3 technologies. Getting shoppers over the crypto wallet, identity, payment, and terminology hurdles is essential for obtaining broad adoption. Without adoption by shoppers, unified Web2 and Web3 CRM data evaporates, as does Salesforce's customer value proposition for the Salesforce Web3 product.

To overcome these onboarding challenges for shoppers using Salesforce Web3, I designed identity and payment solutions and guidelines for our customers to reduce shopper friction with Web3 and ensure a smooth onboarding process.

Success Criteria

My Salesforce Web3 UX success criteria, based on our corporate Salesforce criteria, are refined and adapted to drive solutions for the crypto wallet, identity, and payment hurdles to benefit the experience for our customers and their shoppers.

• Easy
  We make it easy for our customers to get into Web3 by focussing on the onboarding user experience related to wallets and payments for both customers and shoppers

• Connected
  We connect existing customer relationship management (CRM) data and new Web3 on a single platform to provide a seamless user experience with a single ID for authentication and personalization for customers and shoppers

• Trusted
  We embed trust in our Web3 experience by ensuring control, inspectability, and confidence for customers and shoppers

• Sustainable
  We prioritize sustainability by providing Web3 solutions that allow our customers to visualize and understand the impact of their current and future Web3 activities

During the Discover phase of our Double Diamond design thinking process, I focused on creating personas to help the product team understand the needs and goals of our users. Utilizing Salesforce's internal persona database, I located the three applicable Commerce Cloud personas and augmented them with Web3 goals and tasks.

The Shopper, representing our customer's end-users, primarily wants to acquire digital goods confidently. Secondarily, they want to connect their crypto wallets easily and navigate the checkout process seamlessly.

I also created a Merchandising Specialist persona who serves as the program manager for NFT collections. Their primary goal is to create, deploy, and manage NFT collections. This process includes creating NFT data, deploying and managing NFT collections, and ensuring the overall success of the NFT program.

Finally, I developed a Commerce/Crypto Admin persona whose primary task is to set up the Web3 product, previously called "NFT Cloud," and enable the Merchandising Specialist to do their jobs effectively.

The case study's focus is the Shopper's experience while acknowledging that the Merchandising Specialist, who represents the customer, requires the necessary tools and guidance to deliver that experience.