Enhancing business visibility for merchants

2 minutes · Primer · 2022 · Product designer

Key results

- Transformed observability into one of Primer's three core revenue streams
- Empowered merchants with real-time insights for better decision-making
- Increased operational efficiency through streamlined monitoring and alerts
- Achieved high user satisfaction with intuitive, customizable dashboards

The challenge: blind spots in business operations

Merchants using Primer's payment infrastructure faced critical visibility gaps:

- No real-time monitoring of payment stacks
- Cumbersome, inflexible dashboard customization
- Missing alert systems for critical issues
- Complex navigation that hindered quick decision-making
- These limitations created operational inefficiencies and potential revenue loss.

Observability Lite, a free tier of the product

Creation flow of a chart in a custom dashboard

Our solution: putting visibility at merchants' fingertips

Our solution: putting visibility at merchants' fingertips
We designed Primer's observability platform with these key points in mid:

- Clean, intuitive interface for quick access to critical information
- Fully customizable dashboards tailored to each merchant's needs
- Real-time monitoring with instant alert notifications
- Educational campaigns to help merchants maximize platform benefits

Measurable impact

The addition of Observability to the Primer's toolkit delivered immediate value:

- Merchants gained actionable insights through real-time data
- Operational efficiency improved with proactive issue resolution
- User satisfaction scores reached new highs
- Observability became a key revenue driver for Primer

Drill down feature shows the related data to a specific spike

Early iteration of an ETL app to export Observability data

Lessons learned

The success of this project reinforced several important principles:

- User-centered design drives meaningful improvements
- Continuous feedback is essential for iterative development
- Simplicity in complex systems creates the most value
- Education and onboarding enhance platform adoption

Future plans

Although I'm no longer working on this product, the plans for it were

- Expand real-time analytics capabilities
- Integrate predictive insights
- Enhance mobile accessibility
- Develop industry-specific dashboard templates

We’re switching chart libraries and with them, the style of the charts