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A large-scale mixed-methods study to understand merchant shipping challenges across the full product line — generating the foundational insight that shaped investment priorities for three new shipping product areas.
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Company: Shopify · Product Area: Shopify Shipping Services
Methods: Survey Design · Discovery Interviews · Concept Testing · Data Science Partnership · Stakeholder Alignment
How should Shopify invest across its shipping product line? Answering that required building research infrastructure, not just running a study.
Ran a cross-functional open questions session — collected learning objectives from GM, Product, Design, Engineering, Data Science, Marketing, and Commercial before a single question was written
Spreadsheet for initial questions gathering, chosen for low lift collection across stakeholders asynchronously.
Designed a complex branching survey segmented by merchant fulfillment type: self-ship, 3PL, dropship, and combination — ensuring relevance across all merchant profiles
Final mapping of survey design before programming.
Launched a Shipping Services Knowledge Base for ongoing org-wide access to findings beyond the immediate study
Created and shared insight snippets to build ongoing awareness of Knowledge Base.
Directly informed roadmap planning for 3 new product areas, inclu
Informed the initial target addressable market sizing for the Shopify Fulfillment Network pilot
Knowledge Base insights actively referenced years after the study concluded
Shipping questions embedded into the quarterly Shopify-wide merchant survey — scaling data collection permanently
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💡 Notable takeaway: Designed as infrastructure from the start — not a one-time study, but a system for ongoing knowledge access. The cross-functional scoping process and roadshow format became a model for investment research at Shopify's scale.
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