Building content from the ground up at Alibaba Group

Company: Alibaba Group (Accio & AI Mode) Role: Content Strategist (Contract) Duration: 3 months Scope: Audit · Style guide · Feature content

The Problem

When I joined, Alibaba Group had launched its Accio platform about a year earlier. While there had previously been a dedicated content strategist for about six months, there were no existing voice and tone guidelines or agreed-upon terminology aside from the Alibaba.com guidelines. As Accio was scaling rapidly, and the functionality would soon be integrated into Alibaba.com as AI Mode, the absence of content infrastructure was becoming more necessary to correct and prevent inconsistent language across the experience while maintaining a rapid release schedule.

I was the only dedicated content resource on both Accio and AI Mode. Rather than being embedded in a single feature team, my mandate was broader: assess what existed, define what was missing, and build the content layer that would enable everything else.

My Approach

With a short timeline and no existing playbook, I started where any good content strategy has to: with the current state. I conducted a full content audit of both the Accio site and app, documenting inconsistencies, terminology gaps, and opportunities for improvement across both content and UX design.

I compiled my audit findings into a formal report shared with the content team and senior leadership. It wasn't just a list of problems, it was a structured case for action, including:

Audit process documentation

Methodology and scope, so findings could be reproduced or extended

Key findings with screenshots

Concrete, visual evidence of gaps and inconsistencies across both products

Recommendations with rationale

Not just what to fix, but why, with the thinking made explicit

Competitive examples

How other products handle identified gaps, to ground recommendations in real-world precedent

Next steps for content strategy

A roadmap for the following fiscal year, giving leadership a clear path forward

From there, I built a style guide for Accio covering voice and tone, AI-specific content patterns, a terminology glossary, and component-level content rules for buttons, errors, and empty states. When AI Mode

Alongside the infrastructure work, I wrote feature content for both Accio and AI Mode, producing copy, UX strings, and documentation intended to ship with new features as they were developed.

  • I audited the web and mobile experiences for Accio and AI Mode. The following is one single flow I audited, which I’ve provided here to show my notes and thought process when auditing.

My Role

I started by reviewing the previous content strategy deck, a recent marketing audit, and conducting my own audit of the product to identify gaps. From there, I drove collaboration with marketing, conducted dozens of interviews, and secured buy-in from product and service teams. Once the new strategy was defined, I partnered with engineering to update content across emails, push notifications, landing pages, in-product messaging, and call scripts. I worked closely with my design partner to redesign the Live Bookkeeping page, rolling out the new roadmap design. Finally, I worked with bookkeeping managers to roll out the new approach through bookkeeper training.

The Impact

  • 15-minute drop in average call times from clearer UI terms, which boosted efficiency.

    • Shorter call times increased appointment availability and customer satisfaction with scheduling.

  • Marked increase in positive user sentiment as seen in randomized reviews of recorded calls, asynchronous user feedback, and follow-up user interviews.

  • Increased first-30-day document uploads by 5–10 documents per user on average through consistent, actionable navigation.

  • 20% increase in delivering Cleanup within 30 days as faster document submission streamlined workflows and reduced delays.