How We Revamped the Cloud Assistant App: A B2B Product Redesign Journey

What Is Cloud Assistant?

Cloud Assistant is a mobile office platform for Suning.com merchants and suppliers, offering features such as task management, data viewing, order management, refund handling, complaint processing, and message management, enabling merchants to handle urgent tasks on the go.

Why Redesign?

Version 3.0 was positioned merely as a mobile office tool. As the merchant base grew, the product needed to evolve from a simple tool into a service platform, prompting a comprehensive redesign.

Pre‑Redesign Analysis

1. Page Analysis

1.1 Home Page – The home page serves as the central hub for order processing and data viewing, but its content was limited to a single data dashboard and a plugin collection, with issues such as single‑type information, unstructured data metrics, an ever‑growing number of plugins, and inconsistent icon styles.

1.2 Detail Pages – Detail pages suffered from stacked frameworks, confusing visual hierarchy, and poor user experience.

2. Competitive Analysis

Both horizontal functional benchmarking and vertical competitor analysis were performed to identify functional gaps and visual direction.

3. Problem Identification & Redesign Goals

Based on the analyses, three primary goals were set: optimize the framework structure, establish brand perception, and create a unified design language.

Design Execution

1. Optimize Framework Structure

1.1 Prioritize Dashboard Metrics – Data showed that task‑order processing clicks outranked today’s and yesterday’s order data clicks, so the task module was placed at the top for immediate access.

1.2 Plugin Classification – Plugins were grouped into six categories: product, order, finance, marketing, data, and finance, facilitating future management.

1.3 Customizable Functions – Personalized settings were introduced to allow merchants to tailor functionalities to their habits.

2. Build Brand Perception

2.1 Color Upgrade – The brand’s blue was refreshed with higher purity for a cleaner, more vibrant look.

2.2 Icon Unification – Icons were standardized using a flat, solid, yet lively style, and a design guide defined rounded corners (9 px, with common variants of 3 px, 6 px, 9 px) and single‑color line art.

3. Create Design Language

3.1 Card‑Based Layout – Card containers were adopted to organize complex plugin information, using large titles, whitespace, and typographic hierarchy.

3.2 Unit Grid System – A 6 px base grid was chosen to balance flexibility and consistency with the main Suning site.

3.3 Light‑Weight Card Content – Unnecessary decorative elements were removed, emphasizing content clarity.

3.4 Component‑Based Architecture – The UI was broken into basic elements (buttons, forms, tables, tags, modals) and business modules, enabling independent optimization, cost savings, efficiency gains, and consistent experience.

Reflection

Successful B2B redesign requires business‑driven decisions, merchant feedback, data mining, and competitor insights, with iterative, fast‑paced updates. The Cloud Assistant 4.0 redesign marks a shift toward user‑experience‑focused architecture, componentized content, and unified UI controls, achieved through cross‑functional collaboration.

Future work will continue to refine scenarios, address remaining functional gaps, and deliver greater value to merchants.