Research & UX Strategy to Expand Market: Order Data Center Network Port via Web, 45 Days → <24 Hours, 187% Revenue

Company: Equinix

Project Summary

Equinix's 45-day order-to-activation time made us uncompetitive. From research to launch, I led the UX transformation that reduced it 98% to <24 hours, generating 87% revenue growth.

Responsibilities: END-TO-END ux

• Sole Experience Designer
• Quantitative research
• UX & Product strategy
• Prototypes & UX specifications
• Pixel-perfect designs

Timeline & Team

4 months, with a Product Owner, Technical Product Manager, Engineering, & external visual designer

Results

• 98% reduction
• 87% revenue growth --> $21.7M/mo
• Expanded market to SMBs.

COMPANY & PRODUCT OVERVIEW

Equinix is the largest global data center provider, and Internet Exchange is the world's largest peering platform, where networks rent physical ports to exchange traffic directly—faster speeds, lower costs than third-party routing.

• 190+ data centers
• 70+ countries

Internet Exchange

Direct Connection

• Cheaper
• Faster
• Lower latency

PROCESS

I led the UX from research through launch over 4 months, collaborating with a Product Owner, Technical Product Manager, part-time Visual Designer in Toronto, and Engineering team in Singapore.

Discovery & Research with stakeholders & peer products

Set design strategy

Experience design with focus on serving users & comprehensive coverage

Collaborating to implement with remote devs

DISCOVERY & RESEARCH

For foundations and ideas, I learned about IX, its challenges, our goals, related designs, and constraints from IX’s TPM & PO, our related order forms and their designers, competitors’ order forms, and our two design systems.

Learn IX domain

Heuristic & competitive analyses

Consult related products’ designers

Assess 2 baby design systems

DISCOVERY

Our TPM’s process map showed that our 45-day average came from our enterprise, white-glove mindset: basic information collected first, then sales, legal, operations, and engineering followed up, creating weeks of back-and-forth with customers.

Ramped up on existing process

Key finding: Customers submitted order, then Equinix departments consulted with customers to customize and negotiate

Follow-ups added up 

Opportunity to restructure process to collect all information before placing order

RESEARCH --> STRATEGIC SHIFT

My competitive analysis revealed that matching competitors' 2-day speed meant actually expanding from enterprise experts to SMB customers, who needed transparent pricing, educational content, and complete upfront workflows.

Competitor customers are less technically knowledgeable

I realized competitors' speed was one just part of a larger strategic difference. Their designs focused on small and medium businesses (SMB). So I pushed our team to reframe our goal from the 2-day target to "add support for SMB customers."
 

Identified 3 design imperatives

DESIGN STRATEGY

I established three design goals: make configuration effects visible (not hidden in dropdowns), support less technical users with in-context help, and integrate all workflows—from new country accounts to document signing—into one comprehensive wizard.

Make process, logic, and pricing transparent and visible

Add in-context educational content

Integrate all ordering scenarios and edge cases into wizard

SOLUTION: VISIBILITY & STRUCTURE

I transformed the business process map into a 5-stage wizard using tile-based selections—making configuration effects visible as choices immediately affected downstream options, with pricing transparent from page one.

1. Show the 5-stage process in a persistent map
2. Use tile arrays for 1-of-n and x-of-n questions, for visibility along with progressive disclosure to show the next logical question when users make their selections
3. Show real-time price as customer builds order using a persistent order summary

SOLUTION: INTEGRATION & COMPLETENESS

I integrated all special case workflows—new country account setup, document signing through our e-signature vendor—as embedded sub-tasks, reducing the typical 6-8 departmental touchpoints to zero by collecting everything in the wizard.

DESIGN SYSTEM INNOVATION

I expanded on our baby design system’s single-line tiles by adding multi-line variants—showing speed, cost, location, and more—and new order summary and document signing components that became templates for all Equinix port ordering.

1. Created tile variants to support users' at-a-glance comparisons
2. Added new components: process map, document signing tiles, order summary
3. Impact:  These patterns became templates company-wide: 6+ existing port products and subsequent new products

BUSINESS RESULTS

Order-to-activation dropped 98% from 45 days to under 24 hours. Over 18 months: revenue increased 87% to $21.7M/month, port sales 73%—customers bought both more ports and more expensive configurations.

98% reduced

187%

173%

"...activation in <24 hours"

Task time

Monthly revenue

Ports sold/month

User testimonial

Customers bought more expensive ports

Changed behavior

STRATEGIC iMPACT & LESSONS

We expanded IX's market to SMB customers through research-driven design—a strategic win beyond our 2-day goal. Next time, I'd advocate for UX involvement earlier in process mapping and Engineeering discussions.

Market expansion achieved

Research-driven design decisions (transparent pricing, educational content, visible logic) made IX accessible to SMB segment—a strategic outcome beyond original brief.

Foundation for future

Established wizard template, tile patterns, integrated workflows used across all Equinix port products—created company-wide ordering consistency from single project.

• Patterns adopted by 6+ existing & all subsequent products company-wide

Lesson learned

Research-driven design decisions (transparent pricing, educational content, visible logic) made IX accessible to SMB segment—a strategic outcome beyond original brief.

SUMMARY

98% faster activation. 87% revenue growth. Market expansion. Design system foundation.

Smashed original 2-day goal: Transformed 45-day high-touch process into a comprehensive online experience with a <24-hour activation time

Strategic shift from 2-day goal to adding SMB customers: expanded market, added revenue, and led to customers buying more expensive ports

Platform-wide impact: Design system patterns and wizard template adopted across 6+ existing products and used in subsequent new products 

"Thanks for all your efforts last year to make these flows so good they're changing perceptions of interacting with Equinix. This project is going to have a huge impact."

Product Owner, Greg Dendy