When I joined Desertcart in February 2025, the e-commerce giant was at a crossroads. Born in the UAE in 2015 with a mission to deliver “anything you can’t find locally” to shoppers in 160+ countries, the company was hitting record order volumes—but the digital experience felt patchwork, propped up by legacy tools and agency-driven patches.
Lifeforce began as a moon-shot vision from legendary life-coach Tony Robbins and physician-innovator Dr. Peter Diamandis, with early backing from tennis icon Serena Williams.
Revamp the app and site to boost user experience, match the new brand identity, and enhance conversion rates with a smooth, user-friendly, and visually appealing online shopping experience.
My initial three months felt refreshingly collaborative. Stakeholders clearly understood the strategic importance of design, empowering me to begin with an in-depth audit of the existing user experience. I partnered with specialized agencies to conduct robust market research, laying a solid foundation for the upcoming design sprint.
We began by listening. Through two extensive rounds of moderated user interviews in key markets like the UAE and India, we dug deep to understand existing pain points. We observed users interacting with both our current site and early prototypes from our design sprint, benchmarking against top competitors. After rigorous analysis spanning six intense weeks, we pinpointed clear improvements: solutions not just to customer frustrations, but powerful enhancements aligning directly with Desertcart's ambitious billion-dollar vision
Greenlight secured from leadership, the clock was ticking—peak shopping season was fast approaching. As the newly appointed Head of Design, I swiftly assembled a dedicated external & internal team: three talented freelance designers, three front-end developers, and one backend developer.
Recognizing the tight timelines, we embraced agility. Our strategy was iterative, rolling out one high-impact component at a time, prioritizing robust foundational UX and creating structures primed for future scalability.
Today, just months into our intensive redesign journey, we've successfully revamped the entire homepage, product listing pages, search, and navigation across all 160+ supported countries—a monumental milestone. Simultaneously, we constructed a scalable, token-based design system, significantly accelerating the pace of development.
We're also embracing cutting-edge AI tools like Cursor and Claude, transforming design handoffs into React components—sharply reducing our build cycles from weeks to mere days.
