Shoppable video: from MVP to multi-market launch

Context

Klarna had 150M+ shoppers globally, and the app was becoming a key surface for content-driven shopping. The Social Shopping team was building new commerce formats to bridge content engagement and purchase. Shoppable video did not exist yet. The brief: build from zero, validate in the US market, and design a system that could scale to five markets without bespoke builds per region.

The problem

Users were interested, but the flow broke context. Most comparable shopping video experiences used a redirect-to-product-page pattern. Stakeholders expected the same. High abandonment despite high intent suggested the pattern — not the product — was the problem.

My role

Lead product designer on Shoppable Video, embedded in the Social Shopping team. I worked with product, engineering, research, analytics, and local market teams. My role was to turn fragmented evidence into a clear product direction, then reduce implementation risk through testable interaction models and a reusable component system. I owned the interaction model, the embedded commerce layer design, the component system, and the research pipeline — plus stakeholder alignment to make the alternative testable before asking engineering to commit.

Research insight

The finding that changed direction: users were not losing purchase intent. They were losing emotional context. In session reviews, users often tapped with clear intent — but after landing on a generic product page they paused, scrolled, or exited instead of continuing to checkout. Drop-off correlated with navigation events, not price sensitivity or product interest.

Design direction

Embedded checkout preserved intent, but created risks around video clutter, accidental taps, localisation complexity, and performance. The design challenge was to make commerce available without turning the content experience into a product page.

Constraints

The solution had to work across five markets with different legal copy, pricing formats, and currency display — without requiring separate designs per region. It had to avoid cluttering the video experience, handle accidental tap recovery, and fit within Klarna's existing checkout architecture rather than bypassing it. Performance on lower-end Android devices was also a constraint — the commerce layer couldn't degrade the video playback experience.

Design exploration

Final solution

Users could tap a product CTA on the video, review key details in-place, add to cart, and enter checkout without leaving the feed. Video context stayed visible through the decision — the emotional connection was not broken at the first tap.

• Embedded commerce layer on the video surface with progressive product detail
• Checkout entry directly from the video layer — no PDP redirect, no context switch
• Tracking states for each interaction step so drop-off could be isolated by action, not just funnel stage

System for scale

Same components, localised content. Each new market was a configuration change — not a redesign — which made the European expansion operationally viable after the US launch.

Why it worked

The winning pattern did not increase intent. It protected intent. Users already wanted to buy. The product work was about removing the moments where that intent was lost — and building a reusable model that could scale across markets without one-off redesigns. After the US validation, expansion into UK, Sweden, Spain, and Germany did not require separate redesigns. Each market was a configuration change. That's the bigger operational impact — not just improving the funnel, but reducing the cost of scaling it.