IC PARTS HUB
02Turning a 59,000-part catalog into quotes
IC Parts Hub is a live, data-dense B2B sourcing platform for hard-to-find ICs. I turned a 59,000-part catalog into a fast path from search to a quote. I led it end to end, designing an RFQ-first flow built to earn a cautious buyer's trust and convert paid-ad traffic.
Buyers arrive after everything else has failed.
By the time someone lands here, the big suppliers have already let them down. Their backup plan (redesigning the board around a part they can get) is slow and expensive. So the site has a few seconds to feel trustworthy and turn “do you have it?” into “send me a quote.”
59,000 parts
Thousands of old, hard-to-find chips. The catalog is built so they all lead to a quote.
RFQ, not a cart
No stock, no prices, no checkout. Every page points to one action: ask for a quote.
They expect what others trained them to
Buyers expect what the big suppliers taught them: live prices, live stock, instant answers. This business works differently: no inventory, every part sourced on request. The site has to reset that expectation the moment they land, without losing them.
Turning a no-price model into a page that converts
RFQ instead of a cart
No inventory means no checkout. So instead of a cart, every page lets you ask for a quote. Need a whole list? Upload it, or drop parts into a quote tray and send them together.
The PDP as a paid-acquisition landing page
Most people arrive from a Google ad, straight onto a product page. So I treated it like one. The quote button sits at the top, with the proof a nervous buyer needs right beside it, so the ad spend doesn't go to waste.
Pre-filled quote at the highest-intent moment
The form already knows the part you're looking at, so it fills in the part number and maker for you, and only asks for quantity and email address. Less typing, right when someone's ready to act.
Making 59,000 parts easy to move through
With this much data, fancy cards get in the way. I used plain tables, filters that narrow fast, and words for availability instead of prices. It fits how these buyers actually work: scan, trust, act.
A high-trust tool is judged on its non-happy paths
Empty results, unrecognized part numbers, out-of-scope requests, and partial matches each got a deliberate state.
A token-based system built to scale
Color, type, spacing, and about 14 reusable pieces, all standardized. It keeps 59,000 pages consistent and lets the team build fast.
I work design-to-code
I set the direction and delivered implementation-ready design while a dev team built it. I worked with them closely for QA and personally fixed the front end when needed. This collaborative environment allowed us to address states, edge cases, and potential issues quickly, rather than patching them in later.
Live and converting
IC Parts Hub shipped with an architecture built for discoverability across the full catalog, product pages tuned to convert paid and organic traffic, and a trust layer for a cautious buyer.
139 RFQs / Month
Consistent volume spanning 8% of active inventory shows steady platform throughput and healthy long-tail catalog discovery.
63% Completion Rate
Nearly 7 in 10 initiated flows reach submission, proving that streamlined inputs and file uploads minimized friction in the user path.
42% Multi-Item RFQs
Averages 3.2 parts/request, validating that buyers use the platform as a multi-item workspace rather than a single-part lookup tool.
2 min 15 sec Avg Time
Tested buyers built and sent 3-item requests in under 2.5 minutes, drastically undercutting traditional 20-minute email workflows.