Sumo Rebrand &
Sumo Shortcuts: All-in-1 Ecommerce Tools
Sumo helps small online businesses manage customer relationships with powerful yet easy-to-use marketing tools, including live chat, email capture and subscription management, and data analytics.
The founder of Sumo was raised in poverty by his single mother, who supported the family through her own small business. That experience shaped his deep belief that small businesses are the true backbone of the American economy—and the most meaningful way to uplift and sustain families.
As Design Manager at Sumo, I built and led a research-driven, data-informed design practice tailored to the fast-paced reality of a resource-constrained small business. My team operated with true agility—rapid iteration cycles, close collaboration, and a relentless focus on delivering testable prototypes and actionable insights.
We introduced Sumo’s first structured brainstorming sessions, broke down silos by fostering open communication across the company, and partnered closely with the Customer Success team to translate real user feedback directly into product improvements.
Case Study / 001
Sumo Rebrand
Like many engineer-led startups with a strong “ship-it-now” mentality, Sumo had grown without a cohesive design system or consistent brand voice. Instead, the UI was stitched together feature-by-feature—a true Frankenstein that desperately needed definition, alignment, and cleanup.
001 / Audit & Roadmap
Conducted a full product audit using real usage data and sunset underperforming features and legacy components.
Defined clear versions of the design system to set priorities and timelines, unifying every product under a clean, modern “3.0 - Generic Cleanup” baseline.
Simultaneously, the UI team began research and exploration to shape the future “4.0 - Rebrand” brand voice and visual direction.
002 / Adopt & Update
Once the brand voice was defined, the UI team took the next step by extending the established design language across sample pages. This allowed us to stress-test its practicality and see how the final designs align with the new brand identity.
At the same time, the UX team reviewed and consolidated inconsistent elements scattered throughout various Sumo products, unifying the content language, terminology, and interaction patterns to create a more cohesive experience. We implemented missing components, states, and edge cases—such as loading indicators, error messages, empty states, and interactive variations—that had previously been overlooked or handled inconsistently.
Finally, we documented everything in a comprehensive new Sumo design guideline. This living resource serves as the single source of truth for the entire design team, promoting alignment, reducing redundancy, and ensuring long-term consistency as we continue to evolve the product ecosystem.
Case Study / 002
Sumo Shortcuts
On average, small businesses juggle more than 14 different digital tools. Each one brings not only a financial cost, but also a steep learning curve and significant time investment—major obstacles that prevent many owners from fully automating and scaling their operations.
At Sumo, our mission is to eliminate these barriers and deliver streamlined, results-driven e-commerce strategies to our customers. That's why we created Sumo Shortcuts—automated, step-by-step, easy-to-set-up tools that put strategy first and cover the full customer funnel. They help businesses build stronger connections with their audience, from the moment customers discover the brand all the way through to taking action.
Working closely with our Customer Success team and drawing on real customer data and feedback, we've launched 6 powerful Shortcuts. Here are two standout highlights:
Grow Email List
Effortlessly grow your email list and build a thriving newsletter audience with fully automated campaigns that turn website visitors into engaged subscribers.
It starts with a high-converting signup incentive to capture emails, followed by a warm welcome newsletter that introduces your brand and delivers immediate value, and continues with strategically timed sales announcements and content updates that keep subscribers opening, reading, and buying.
The Grow Email List Sumo Shortcut puts your newsletter growth on autopilot—ensuring the right message reaches the right person at the perfect moment, steadily expanding your email list with high-quality, engaged subscribers ready to hear from you.
Reduce Cart Abandonment
This Sumo Shortcut is designed to prevent and recover lost sales and nurture customer relationships by turning abandoned carts into completed purchases.
Seamlessly bridge the moment of hesitation to conversion with automated campaigns that gently guide shoppers back to their cart. It starts with a timely exit-intent or post-abandonment signup offer to capture their email, followed by a personalized abandoned cart reminder series, and continues with targeted follow-up messages featuring discounts, social proof, or urgency triggers—all working together to re-engage and convert.
Powered by intelligent triggers like cart abandonment and purchase actions, this all-in-one automation effortlessly nurtures recovering leads without complexity.
We streamline the entire drip campaign into a single, easy-to-manage workflow—no need to connect multiple email tools to your website. Small business owners can set up and launch the full cart recovery strategy in minutes, complete with built-in comprehensive data analysis to track performance and optimize results.
