From doubt to desire: building India’s new trust in online brands
Rebuilding Meesho Mall so shoppers recognise brands by colour before they read a word.
Role
Senior Product Designer
Timeline
2022–2023
Where it started
Meesho sells unbranded goods to shoppers who came for the price. Meesho Mall is the place inside the app for branded products: competitive alternatives with better quality, for shoppers who seek quality.
Mall products were first tried out quietly, with a small tag on the card, and shoppers showed they would spend a little extra for good quality: Mall had found its go-to-market.
When bold wasn’t enough
With the go-to-market in hand, v2 made Mall bold everywhere: a home widget and banner, a Mall landing page, category pages, identifiers on listing and product pages, brand storefronts, USPs spelled out. Orders jumped at launch, then the graphs went flat.
Shoppers ignored the messaging and stayed on their usual paths. Mall still felt abstract. And the business had filled it with seller labels for margin, so the badge sat on products nobody recognised.
Before v3: what shoppers told us
Research before the v3 launch, in homes and on devices.
The name already worked“Mall” meant company products to shoppers before we explained anything.
Nobody wanted a programmeUSPs and programme language were ignored. People cared about the product in front of them.
The badge was unreadableThe old pill was hard to read; the letter “l” confused people. A tick read as trust. Purple stood out from every other colour in the app.
v3: sell brands, not Mall
Two objectives: make shoppers aware Mall exists, and make them understand what it is when they meet it.
Decide what Mall is
Seller labels outArgued the business out of local seller labels: real brands only, or the badge means nothing. Popular brand names became the explanation.
A badge shoppers can readPurple tick, legible wordmark. Colour chosen to win attention on a listing card against every other tag and programme; colour and mark made stronger than the Mall branding itself.
Be found
Bottom-nav entry and onboardingMall got a tab. The modal explains it with brands people already know and celebrity faces for trust and attention.
Splash on first visitsFor the first few entries into a Mall product or landing page: the feeling of walking into a mall to buy company products.
Listing-page hintFor shoppers who missed onboarding and never visited Mall: explains Mall and points at the pill so they can find it again.
Be understood where decisions happen
Product pageA purple enclosure so a Mall product page looks different from the rest. A brand entry point at the top for curiosity. Brand content and brand performance below the details.
Landing page for new shoppersPopular brand logos, popular products as hooks, brand names that rotate weekly; top categories to catch intent; product-level discovery kept.
Landing page for returning shoppersMall-local search for faster rediscovery, top categories for quick access, a best-offers widget.
Order confirmationA purple animation at the moment of purchase, so the colour and the programme stick.
What happened
Seller labels are gone from Mall; every product with the badge is a brand.Shoppers recognise Mall by colour before they read a word.
Mall’s share of the business is confidential for a listed company; I walk through it in interviews.
The full case study expands here. Live, it sits behind a password that comes with my application.
In the full case study:
The v2 mixed-feed bet, and why it lost
The research turn: its rounds, places and methods
The seller-label call, from v2 to v3
The purple tick and every v3 surface: why, how, what worked
The full case study
The full case study
v2: the mixed-feed bet
Shipped, then flat
Why
The first launch had found the go-to-market, but its quiet tag did not explain Mall: asked to point out the branded products, shoppers said everything looked branded. Awareness and discoverability were low, and people did not realise they were ordering from Mall.
How
v2 made an aggressive bet on mixed feeds: a pill and a colour on Mall cards inside normal search and category results, so shoppers met Mall where they already scroll and could compare it with marketplace products. Around it, more journey points and louder comms: a home widget and banner, a Mall landing page, category landing pages, identifiers on listing and product pages, brand storefronts, and the USPs “Original Brands” and “Direct From Company” on home and the product page.
What worked
Orders and views jumped at launch, Mall’s share of the business climbed, and the launch won a quarterly award. Then the line went flat. People scan images, not pills. The pill was read last, if at all, and a cheaper look-alike beside a Mall card became the hook. Marketplace listings carry promises inside their photos, so brand cards looked quiet next to them; duplicates of the very brands we highlighted blurred the signal.
The research turn
Through v2 and v3
Why
The v2 reads and the usability tests agreed: comprehension was poor even among shoppers who had visited Mall many times, so the constructs we had shipped were not doing the job. Another shade of blue would not fix that.
How
We went to homes instead of shipping another tweak. About four rounds a year for a year and a half: diary studies with repeat shoppers, a week each; in-home interviews in Lucknow and Gaya, in Hindi; concept preference tests with 50+ shoppers a round; and usability tests on every v2 and v3 build.
What worked
“Mall” already meant company products, and USPs did not matter: people cared only about the product they wanted. The old mark was hard to read, and a tick in purple read as trust. No amount of blue, or boldness, could shortcut genuine user belief.
The seller-label call
Removed in v3
Why
In v2 the business wanted seller labels on Mall products for margin: small local labels, not the brands shoppers knew. Shoppers had not built trust in Mall yet, and every label that was not a brand diluted the one thing the badge had to say.
How
I argued against them in v2, and the labels went in anyway. The research gave the argument its evidence: the labels were diluting what shoppers understood Mall to be. For v3, my advocacy and research shifted us to real brands only, with popular brand names as the explanation of Mall.
What worked
Seller labels came off entirely, so every product with the badge is a brand, and national brands started onboarding.
The purple tick
Shipped in v3
Why
On a listing card the Mall pill competed with every other tag and programme in the app, and shoppers could not read it: the letter “l” confused people.
How
Two goals for the rebrand: find the colour that wins attention on a listing card among every other colour and programme, and make the colour and mark stronger than the Mall branding itself, so a shopper knows Mall without reading it. A tick, because a tick read as trust; a legible wordmark; purple, because it stood out from every other colour in the app.
What worked
Purple came to mean Mall: shoppers recognise it by colour before they read a word.
v3: purple became the promise
Shipped in v3
Why
v2 had explained Mall, and shoppers ignored the explaining. v3 set two objectives: make shoppers aware Mall exists, through brands they already know, and make them understand it where they decide, so they remember it next time.
How
v3 rebuilt Mall around recognition, not explanation.One colour and one mark, carried through every step: a bottom-nav entry with an education modal of popular brands and celebrity faces; a splash for the first few visits; a hint on listings for anyone who missed it; a purple enclosure on the product page, with the brand’s own content; a landing page that leads with logos for newcomers and search for regulars; and a purple animation when the order is confirmed.
What worked
People now recognise Mall by colour. Anchored by celebrities and icons, Mall became recognisable, a go-to place and, finally, trusted, and it hit the share the business had asked for at kickoff. The lesson I took from it: the answer was brand-led storytelling, not more UI tweaks.
