The problem
Canva’s print panel only let you print a front and a back. Say a business made one file with six pages of business cards, one for each person in the office. It couldn’t print them in a single order. The design had to be split into three separate files, each added to checkout on its own.
Bulk printing set out to fix this by letting customers print every page of a design in one go. When I joined the team in August 2024, the first version was already designed and in build. I supported the end of the build and the October release. It shipped as a checkbox labelled “Print as sets” and brought in $1M in orders in its first 80 days.
What the data showed
People were using the feature, but they didn’t understand it. I pulled evidence from three places:
- Support requests. Our CX team spotted a pattern in support tickets about bulk printing soon after launch.
- Session recordings. I got the bulk printing experiment added to FullStory so I could watch real sessions. Customers toggled the checkbox on and off again and again, trying to work out what it did.
- Usability testing. I ran unmoderated sessions through User Interviews and saw the same behaviour. Participants said they didn’t know what “sets” meant, and found choosing pages confusing.
I saw two root problems. Customers couldn’t see what they were about to print, and the label didn’t match how they thought about their design. Once the support ticket data came in, it was clear we had to move fast. I ran a workshop with the team to generate ideas, size the effort for each and capture everyone’s input.
What we changed
The redesign was about showing customers what would print before they committed to it.
- A clear entry point instead of a checkbox. A checkbox invited trial and error. A button made bulk printing a deliberate choice.
- A dedicated bulk printing state. The entry point opens a version of the print panel with single- or double-sided options and a clear preview of every set.
- A live preview. The preview flips between single- and double-sided as the options change. Customers can see exactly what their choices do.
- “Print all pages”, not “Print as sets”. I explored lots of options with our content designer. Their testing found “sets” wasn’t well understood. “Page” was already familiar, because customers pick a page to print elsewhere in the panel.
Trade-offs along the way
- One preview, many shapes. Business cards are landscape, flyers are portrait, and apparel and stickers are square. A single preview had to work for all of them, and space on mobile was even tighter. Before confirming the UI, I stress-tested every shape in Figma.
- Performance over showing everything. Loading every set slowed the panel down on large designs. I asked the team to add a “Load more” button, so customers see the first sets quickly and pull in the rest when they need them.
- Mobile, late in the day. The improvement was scoped for desktop, and the team flagged the mobile gap late. I had to solve it quickly without reopening the desktop design, which was already locked.
Results
- +24%Average basket size
- −4%Refunds during the rollout
- ~200Fewer refunds a month, projected at full rollout
The improvement launched in January 2025 and average basket size grew 24%. Refunds fell 4% during the rollout. Our data scientist projected that would mean about 200 fewer refunds a month at full rollout. I kept watching FullStory sessions and CX feedback after launch to check the changes held up.
Looking beyond the fix
The improvement dealt with the specific feedback we’d heard: seeing what would print, and understanding the label. But I thought there was a bigger opportunity to rethink how customers choose pages to print in the first place.
I wrote an alignment doc setting out the problem space, the opportunities and some surfaces worth exploring:
- Choosing pages directly from the thumbnails in the design editor
- Clearer labels on those thumbnails
- Selecting every page by default when a customer clicks Print
To make the idea concrete, I built a prototype of a new “Print all pages” flow in Claude and shared it with the e-commerce team in a deck. They were taking over the feature once it was fully rolled out, so my team could move on to new work. I owned the handover, documented it well, and made sure these ideas went into their future planning.
What I’d do differently
I’d agree platform scope with the team at the start. Mobile was missed in the original plan, and solving it late meant working around a desktop design that was already locked. Covering every platform and every product shape from day one would have given the mobile version more room to be designed well, rather than just made to fit.
Timing matters too. Some of the ideas in my handover, like labelling pages “front” and “back”, didn’t get much traction at the time, even though I pushed for them. Canva has since started exploring a more print-focused editor that covers similar ground. I had no part in that, but it’s a good reminder that ideas need the right moment. The business, and the other teams involved, have to be in a position to take them on. Until then, the best I can do is make the case clearly and document it well enough for someone to pick up later.