GABRIEL RADATOVICS
B2B CLOUD MARKETPLACE · WEB · VODAFONE BUSINESS

Cloud Marketplace

A single, globally-deployable marketplace that lets SME & SoHo businesses — small, medium and home-office companies — across Ireland, Portugal, Spain and South Africa discover, configure and buy Microsoft cloud services — with a Microsoft tenant checkout cut from 12+ screens to 4. It grew out of V-Hub, our free SMB knowledge base born in COVID, and after two executive-committee reviews of the work the programme drew two further rounds of investment — €170M, then €350M. I led design across its 2.5 years, from the first idea on.

PLATFORMWeb · B2B commerce
ROLELead UX / UI Designer
MARKETSIE · PT · ES · ZA
DURATION2.5 years, live
marketplace.vodafone.com/business
Vodafone Business Cloud Marketplace — homepage
HOMEPAGE

The Vodafone Business Marketplace storefront — where SME & SoHo customers discover and buy Microsoft cloud.

00
CONTEXT & ROLE

One Marketplace for
Four Markets

Vodafone Business sells cloud services — chiefly Microsoft 365 and Azure — primarily to its SME and SoHo customers (small, medium and home-office businesses), while the same platform also serves enterprise customers, across multiple countries. Each market ran its own fragmented, hand-built store. My mandate was to design one marketplace that could scale across all of them without fragmenting the experience or the codebase.

The programme was born in COVID. It started as V-Hub — a free knowledge-base platform teaching small and medium businesses how to digitalise. Lockdown pushed a wave of SMBs online, V-Hub launched successfully, and a simple question followed: if we're giving away the knowledge for free, why not also offer the tools to act on it? That insight became the Cloud Marketplace — and I was on it from the very first idea.

Over two and a half years I led product design end to end: discovery and journey mapping across four markets, the information architecture of a single master-site, the design system that let one build serve every country, and the checkout redesign that collapsed a 12-screen Microsoft tenant wall into four guided steps.

The hardest problem throughout was delivering Microsoft's products cleanly into our own system — which is why I ran a constant cadence of meetings with the product owner, the local markets (OpCos) and Microsoft, plus a daily stand-up with front-end and back-end engineers, the scrum master and QA. The platform has been live and continuously improved ever since.

CLIENT
Vodafone Business
PRODUCT
Cloud Marketplace (MaaC)
ORIGIN
Grew out of V-Hub · born in COVID
MY ROLE
Lead UX / UI Designer · from day one
MARKETS
Ireland · Portugal · Spain · South Africa
PARTNER
Microsoft (365 & Azure)
BACKING
+€170M after Y1 · +€350M after Y2 (ExCo)
STATUS
Live · 2.5 years & iterating
HOW A FREE KNOWLEDGE BASE BECAME A MARKETPLACE
2020

COVID pushes SMBs online

Lockdown forces small and medium businesses to digitalise fast — and to look for help doing it.

→
V-HUB

Free knowledge base

We launch V-Hub to teach SMBs how to digitalise. It lands well and brings a wave of new customers.

→
INSIGHT

“Why not sell the tools?”

If the knowledge is free, the natural next step is the software, packages and bundles to act on it.

→
MaaC

The Cloud Marketplace

A B2B store born from a proven customer need — validated by V-Hub before a line was built.

WHAT I OWNED
UX ResearchJourney MappingInformation Architecture Guided SellingCheckout & Commerce UXUI & Visual Design Design System & TokensCo-branding RulesLocalisation Framework PrototypingUsability TestingContinuous CX
01
THE CHALLENGE

Secure Commerce
That Scared People Off

The programme had to solve two problems at once: a purchase journey so complex it lost customers at the payment moment, and a market-by-market approach that made every new country a rebuild.

A 12-Screen Tenant Wall

Microsoft's security requirements produced a 12+ screen tenant-onboarding flow — sign-in, 2FA, tenant selection, domain checks, consent. Drop-off peaked at the single most critical moment: the point of purchase.

Tenant Porting Friction

Moving a customer's Microsoft 365 tenant between plans meant fragile, manual coordination between Vodafone, Microsoft and the customer — slow, error-prone, and a magnet for support calls.

Four Markets, No System

Every country had different branding, language and regulatory needs, and no shared design system. Consistency was impossible and each new market launch started close to zero.

DESIGN OBJECTIVE

Design a scalable, globally-deployable B2B cloud marketplace where customers can discover, configure and purchase Microsoft cloud services across markets — with a checkout simple enough to trust and a single system consistent enough to deploy in weeks, not quarters.

02
DISCOVERY & RESEARCH

Map the Journey
Before Rebuilding It

I opened with structured discovery across all four markets — stakeholder workshops, customer interviews and competitive benchmarking — so the redesign was aimed at measured friction, not assumptions.

HOW I APPROACHED IT
12

Journeys mapped

End-to-end customer journeys mapped across the four markets — from first landing to a live, provisioned subscription.
8

Friction points

Eight critical friction points isolated in the purchase flow — most clustered inside the Microsoft tenant onboarding.
4

Markets aligned

Workshops with local market teams surfaced where branding, language and regulation genuinely had to differ — and where they didn't.
2

Benchmarks

Benchmarked against Microsoft AppSource and AWS Marketplace to set the bar for a credible business cloud store.
WHAT DISCOVERY TOLD US
INSIGHT 01

“The buying stops the moment Microsoft's login appears.”

DESIGN IMPLICATION

The tenant wall was the single biggest leak. Everything else was secondary to guiding customers through — or around — those 12 screens. This became the headline problem.

INSIGHT 02

“I'm not sure which plan I actually need.”

DESIGN IMPLICATION

Small-business owners — often not IT specialists — hesitated on configuration. This drove guided-selling flows that ask a few plain questions and recommend the right plan, instead of dropping people into a spec sheet.

INSIGHT 03

“Is this Vodafone or Microsoft I'm buying from?”

DESIGN IMPLICATION

Co-branding was ambiguous. We set a firm hierarchy — Vodafone always primary, Microsoft product branding always secondary — so trust and accountability were never in doubt.

INSIGHT 04

“Every country's store feels like a different company.”

DESIGN IMPLICATION

Fragmentation hurt both customers and delivery. This justified a single master-site with a shared token library and a localisation framework layered on top.

03
WHO WE DESIGNED FOR

Three Buyers, One
Purchase to Trust

The marketplace was designed SME- and SoHo-first — from a one-person home office to a mid-sized company — the least technical, highest-volume audience; the same platform also serves enterprise buyers. Even at the small end, buying is rarely one person: three overlapping roles judged the same purchase against different concerns — cost, control and complexity.

IT
IT Administrator
SME · Owns the Microsoft tenant
GOALS
  • Provision licences without breaking the tenant
  • Port existing M365 tenants safely
  • See exactly what's active and where
FRUSTRATIONS
  • Fragile manual tenant porting
  • Cryptic Microsoft consent screens
  • No single view of the estate
CARES MOST ABOUT
Tenant safetyProvisioning
PR
Procurement / Finance
Approves the spend
GOALS
  • Predictable, transparent pricing
  • Clean billing on one Vodafone invoice
  • Compliant, auditable purchase
FRUSTRATIONS
  • Hidden costs surfacing at checkout
  • Unclear who is accountable — VF or MS
  • Regulatory differences per market
CARES MOST ABOUT
Price clarityTrust
BO
Business Owner
Small business · Non-technical
GOALS
  • Pick the right plan with confidence
  • Get productive apps live fast
  • Not need an IT degree to buy
FRUSTRATIONS
  • Spec-sheet product pages
  • Too many near-identical plans
  • Fear of buying the wrong thing
CARES MOST ABOUT
Guided sellingSpeed
04
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE · MASTER-SITE

One Master-Site,
Four Localised Stores

The architectural spine of the whole programme: a single master-site design and codebase that resolves to each market's branding, language and regulatory rules through configuration — not a fork. Design the store once; deploy it everywhere.

HOW ONE BUILD BECOMES FOUR STORES
Master-Site — one design, one codebase
Canonical IA, components and flows for the whole marketplace
↓
Shared token & component library
Colour, type, spacing and UI components bound to semantic tokens
↓
Localisation framework
Language, currency, tax/regulatory rules and market branding resolve per country
↓
IE · PT · ES · ZA — four live stores
Each market inherits the system; a new market launches in ~6 weeks
THE FOUR ANCHOR JOURNEYS
Discover
Marketplace home
Browse & search
Featured apps
Category / product list
Decide
Proposition page
Guided selling
Plan comparison
Configure
Buy
Basket
Microsoft sign-in / 2FA
Tenant & consent
Checkout & confirm
Manage
Subscriptions
Tenant porting
Billing
Support
05
THE SOLUTION

One Codebase. Four
Markets. Zero Fragmentation.

The marketplace turns a fragmented, market-by-market toolset into one coherent product — easy to buy from, consistent to trust, and fast to roll out to the next country.

“From a 12-screen tenant wall to four guided steps — secure B2B commerce that finally feels like shopping.”

01

Master-Site Architecture

A single design system adapts to each market's branding, language and regulation — so new markets launch fast, without design drift or a rebuild.

02

Simplified, Guided Checkout

The Microsoft tenant journey drops from 12+ steps to 4, and guided selling helps customers choose the right plan with confidence — cutting abandonment and support calls.

03

Clear Co-branded Trust

Vodafone always primary, Microsoft always secondary — a consistent visual hierarchy across product cards, banners and promotions that keeps accountability unambiguous.

06
DESIGN SYSTEM & CO-BRANDING

A System Built to
Localise and Co-brand

Built on Vodafone's global design system, I created marketplace-specific components aligned to Microsoft 365 product standards, and a shared token library across all four markets. Two rules made it scale: every value is a semantic token, and every co-branded surface follows one hierarchy.

COLOUR TOKENS
Vodafone Red
#E60000
Near-Black
#0D0D0D
Ink
#1A1A1A
Slate
#5A5A5A
Surface
#F6F6F6
White
#FFFFFF

Colour is never hard-coded. Semantic tokens — surface, accent, on-accent, state — resolve per market and per theme, which is exactly what lets one build carry four brandings.

CO-BRANDING HIERARCHY · ONE RULE, EVERY SURFACE
Whose brand leads on a co-branded card?
PRIMARY

Vodafone — voice, container, CTA colour and accountability always sit with Vodafone.

SECONDARY

Microsoft — product identity (M365, Azure, Copilot) is present but visually subordinate.

Applied identically across product cards, banners and promotional imagery — so a customer always knows they're buying from Vodafone, powered by Microsoft.

WHY IT'S BUILT THIS WAY — THREE DECISIONS THAT SCALE

Token discipline

A rigorous semantic token layer is what lets a single master-site resolve to four brandings. Re-skinning a market is a data change, not a redesign.

M365-aligned components

Marketplace components were aligned to Microsoft 365 product standards, so co-branded plan cards read as authentic Microsoft products inside a Vodafone store.

A localisation framework

Language, currency and regulatory rules resolve through configuration — the same reason a new market can be stood up in around six weeks.

07
THE MARKETPLACE · REAL SCREENS

Discover, Decide,
Then Buy

The storefront is deliberately shaped like consumer commerce — familiar patterns doing serious business work underneath. These are real screens from the live design. Click any to view the full page.

HOMEPAGE · THE FRONT DOOR TO BUSINESS MARKETPLACE
marketplace.vodafone.com/business
Cloud Marketplace homepage — featured apps, guided selling, Microsoft Copilot
HOME

Search, featured business applications, guided “how it works” and clear co-branded entry points — the discovery layer that gets a buyer moving.

BROWSE & DECIDE
/business/products
Product list — filterable catalogue of business applications
PRODUCT LIST

A filterable catalogue of business apps and plans, priced and comparable at a glance.

/business/microsoft-365
Proposition page — a single product proposition with plans and guided selling
PROPOSITION

A product proposition page: what it is, which plan fits, and a guided path into configuration.

MICROSOFT + VODAFONE · CO-BRANDED SERVICES
/business/services
Microsoft and Vodafone co-branded services page
SERVICES

Where the co-branding rules earn their keep — Microsoft products presented authentically, always inside the Vodafone frame.

08
DEEP DIVE · THE CHECKOUT

Twelve Screens
Down to Four

The defining piece of product work. Microsoft's tenant onboarding is genuinely complex and non-negotiable — so instead of removing steps, I re-choreographed them: absorbing the mandatory security into four guided stages, each with one clear job.

THE TENSION

Microsoft's tenant security can't be shortened away — 2FA, tenant selection and consent are required. But 12+ raw screens at the payment moment read as risk, and customers walked.

THE APPROACH

Cluster the mandatory steps into four guided stages, explain what each one is for, carry state forward, and keep Vodafone's frame around Microsoft's auth so trust never breaks.

THE FOUR GUIDED STAGES
01

Sign in

Continue with the organisation's Microsoft account — one clear action, framed by Vodafone.

→
02

Verify & consent

2FA and the required tenant permissions, explained in plain language before they happen.

→
03

Choose tenant & plan

Select the tenant and confirm the configured plan, with costs shown in full — no surprises.

→
04

Confirm

Review and buy on a single Vodafone invoice; the subscription provisions automatically.

THE MICROSOFT SIGN-IN · KEPT INSIDE VODAFONE'S FRAME
/business/checkout/sign-in
Microsoft tenant sign-in, presented within the Vodafone marketplace
AUTH

The moment customers used to drop off — now a calm, single-decision screen that hands off to Microsoft without ever feeling like they've left Vodafone.

RESULT
−40%

Cognitive load in checkout reduced by roughly 40% across three rounds of usability testing — the tenant wall stopped being the place the sale died.

09
KEY DECISIONS & TRADE-OFFS

Global Consistency vs
Local Nuance

Two decisions shaped everything else. Both were about holding a line — one on architecture, one on brand — under real pressure to compromise.

Build one master-site, or let each market own its store?
OPTION A · PER-MARKET

Each country builds its own store. Maximum local freedom — but fragmentation, drift and a rebuild every launch.

OPTION B · MASTER-SITE

One design and codebase, localised by configuration. Requires strict token discipline and close work with local teams.

Chosen: the master-site. It demanded rigorous tokenisation and real collaboration with local market teams — and in return, a new market launches in ~6 weeks instead of a fresh build.

How do two strong brands share one card without confusing the buyer?
RISK

Equal weight reads as a joint venture; Microsoft-led reads as “buying from Microsoft, billed by Vodafone.”

RULE

Vodafone primary in container, voice and CTA; Microsoft secondary as authentic product identity.

Chosen: one hierarchy, applied everywhere — product cards, banners and promos — so accountability and trust are never in question.

10
ITERATION & VALIDATION

Piloted, Tested,
Then Scaled

The marketplace wasn't shipped once — it was piloted in Ireland, validated with real customers, then rolled out market by market, improving continuously across 2.5 years of live operation.

WHAT CHANGED THROUGH ITERATION
OBSERVED

Customers stalled at the Microsoft tenant step in testing.

CHANGED

Re-choreographed 12+ screens into 4 explained stages.

RATIONALE

~40% less checkout cognitive load; the sale stopped dying at auth.

OBSERVED

Buyers hesitated choosing between near-identical plans.

CHANGED

Added guided-selling flows validated across 3 segments.

RATIONALE

Confidence to purchase without needing to decode a spec sheet.

OBSERVED

A market-by-market rollout risked drift and slow launches.

CHANGED

Established a reusable rollout playbook on the master-site.

RATIONALE

New markets launch in ~6 weeks, consistent from day one.

Three rounds of usability testing with Vodafone Business customers, plus continuous performance monitoring on the live platform — a feedback loop that ran for the full project lifecycle, not a one-off validation.

HOW THE WORK ACTUALLY HAPPENED · DELIVERY CADENCE

Strategic alignment

Regular sessions with the product owner, the local markets (OpCos) and Microsoft — aligning commercial goals, market-specific rules and, above all, the Microsoft delivery model that was the programme's hardest problem.

Daily delivery, in an Agile team

A daily stand-up with front-end and back-end engineers, the scrum master and QA — so every design decision was pressure-tested against build reality the same day, not weeks later at handoff.

Two executive checkpoints

Year-end presentations to the Vodafone ExCo turned progress into investment: an additional €170M in funding after year one, and a further €350M after year two.

11
IMPACT

Frictionless Commerce
at Scale

One marketplace replaced four fragmented stores — reducing the frontend burden of highly secure Microsoft transactions, simplifying tenant porting, and opening cross-sell and up-sell that fragmentation had blocked. And the business backed it, twice.

EXECUTIVE CONFIDENCE

The work was presented to the Vodafone executive committee at each year-end. Both reviews unlocked a further round of investment to scale the programme — an additional €170M after year one, and €350M after year two — a rare vote of confidence in the product direction.

2×
ExCo rounds funded
+€170M (Y1), then +€350M (Y2)
12→4
Checkout screens
Microsoft tenant wall, re-choreographed
−40%
Checkout cognitive load
across three rounds of testing
4
Markets, one system
new market live in ~6 weeks

Frictionless Complexity

The heavy frontend of secure Microsoft transactions was tamed and tenant porting simplified — driving easier adoption and unlocking cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

Data-Driven Evolution

Core journeys improved continuously through user testing and performance monitoring over 2.5 years live — directly resolving customer pain points and lifting CX metrics.

One Scalable Platform

A single master-site and token library kept four markets consistent and made the next country a configuration, not a rebuild.

12
THE TRANSFORMATION

From Four Stores
to One System

The clearest way to judge the work is the shape of the programme before and after — for the customer buying, and for the team shipping.

BEFORE

Fragmented & fragile

  • A different store in every market
  • No shared design system or tokens
  • 12+ screen Microsoft tenant wall
  • Drop-off at the point of purchase
  • Manual, error-prone tenant porting
  • Every new market a near-rebuild
AFTER · WITH MaaC

One system, four stores

  • A single master-site, localised by config
  • Shared tokens and co-branding rules
  • A guided 4-stage checkout
  • ~40% less cognitive load at payment
  • Simplified, guided tenant porting
  • New market live in ~6 weeks
13
REFLECTION

What I'd Carry Forward

Lessons from 2.5 years on one long-lived B2B platform — the things I'd take into the next brief.

You can't shorten security — so choreograph it

The win wasn't removing Microsoft's steps; it was sequencing and explaining them. Reframing a constraint beat fighting it.

Tokens are a business strategy

Strict tokenisation is what turned “four markets” from a cost into a capability. The design system was the product's scalability.

Co-branding needs a rule, not a vibe

A single, enforced hierarchy removed endless per-asset debates and protected trust across every surface.

Long-lived products reward feedback loops

The biggest gains came from 2.5 years of measured iteration, not the first launch. CX is a practice, not a milestone.