How I convince sellers to upgrade their tier status: TikTok Shop Mall experience
DESIGN
CHALLENGE
TikTok Shop Mall helps shoppers identify authentic brands, but many sellers dropped off before joining: only 5% of whitelisted sellers viewed the Mall page, only 18% of those who clicked “Get started” became eligible to apply, and 51% of onboarded sellers later failed to meet the requirements.
STRATEGY
I redesigned the Mall experience across the full seller journey: discovery, landing page, eligibility check, application, and ongoing performance monitoring. The goal was to help more SEA sellers understand the value of Mall, qualify more easily, and stay enrolled.
RESULT
In Q1 2026, weekly new Mall sellers grew from 245 to 546, an increase of about 300 sellers per week. All countries exceeded their Mall seller-supply targets, and daily GMV beat target across all markets, with Indonesia and Malaysia overachieving by 179% and 145%.
CHALLENGE
Mall GMV outgrows the market in every country, unfortunately sellers never see this value
Between January and June 2025 Mall sellers grew faster than the broader market in all four SEA markets. The clearest signal came from Vietnam, where the market shrank 10.2% but Mall still grew +3.6%. The program demonstrably works but none of that evidence ever reached the people it should convince.
Mall membership journey: breaking down the funnel
AWARENESS / MAIN ISSUES
Only 5% of whitelisted sellers viewed the Mall page (1,435 out of 25,000)
It lived inside Account Settings under “Brand Seller Management”, a name that doesn’t represent Mall and sat far less visibly than the comparable Star Shop entry point, even though both are membership programs.
AWARENESS / SOLUTION
Relocate and rename: move the entry point and use a clear labeling.
CONSIDERATION / MAIN ISSUES
The landing page didn’t sell the value
Research showed that sellers felt Mall’s benefits were unattractive compared to Tokopedia, Shopee, and Lazada.
CONSIDERATION / SOLUTION
Value-led landing page: restructure with AIDA framework
01.HMW improve the perceived value of the Mall program to the sellers & communicate eligibility criteria upfront?
- Use the AIDA framework to structure the content and guide users through the stages of attention, interest, desire, and action.
- Allow users to easily identify their eligibility status upfront.
ELIGIBILITY / MAIN ISSUES
The biggest leak in the funnel
Only 18% of sellers who clicked “Get started” reached “eligible to apply.”
Criteria were dense and unactionable
The criteria were too detailed and not action-oriented. Sellers saw long product lists instead of clear guidance like “how many more products you need.” Some requirements sent sellers to help-center articles instead of action pages, key terms were not explained, and sellers were not notified when they became eligible to reapply.
SIDE CONTEXT
Sellers have to prove that they sell certain numbers of original product by submitting relevant documents; hence there’s a list of products in this page.
ELIGIBILITY / SOLUTION
Simplified eligibility: summarize all criteria with upfront status and one-click join
01.How might we help sellers understand the eligibility criteria and what to do to achieve them?
- Reduce the steps to join the program for eligible sellers and tell ineligible one the summary of the criteria to join.
- Improved reading flow & simplify the eligibility information on monitoring page.
- Clarity on actions to improve performance to be eligible.
MAINTAIN MEMBERSHIP / MAIN ISSUES
Sellers are failing to maintain the criteria hence getting automatically offboarded from the program
51% sellers failed to maintain criteria (out of 3,867 sellers onboarded, 1,974 failed to maintain the criteria).
01.HMW warn sellers before they lose membership, and give them time to recover?
- Give a grace period to recover before off-boarding.
- Surface the at-risk status and what to fix on the monitoring page.
- Give extra communication on other channel: push notification & email.
