Wayfair: Global Supplier Technology Terminology Management

The Problem: While terminology alignment was a critical pillar of Wayfair's strategy to improve supplier success, English terminology was inconsistent across the Partner Home application. User studies confirmed that inconsistent language was a paint point for suppliers. Use of terminology also varied among internal teams, contributing to confusion and frustration for our translations team.

Various teams across the organization were working on terminology related projects. For example, more than one team was tackling the problem of different data points sharing the same label – or the same data point having different labels within a single experience.

My Role: I aligned stakeholders to a terminology intake, validation, and management process. I also worked with the translation team to ensure new and existing terminology is understood and easy to translate.

The Result: With the whole organization aligned to the process, we were able to add 81 terms to the termbase in just a few months. Additional guidance included sections for action words (when to use “import” vs. “upload”), statuses (“always use ‘draft,’ not ‘incomplete’”), and acronyms (“3PL: Spell out ‘third-party logistics’ on first use.”)