📌 Overview
China-based users of MSN couldn’t previously sign in via their Microsoft acccount due to regulatory and infrastructure barriers, limiting personalisation and user retention. As Product Manager, I led a cross-functional effort to enable sign-in for China in full compliance with local laws, resulting in 4 million additional daily active users (DAUs) and 100 million new pageviews annually.
❓ The Problem
Microsoft lacked sign-in capabilities (MSA) in China for MSN, due to:
- Strict regulatory requirements around data, identity, and authentication
- Resulting in a degraded user experience for China users with no access to personalised content after browser cookies are cleared.
This gap restricted engagement and growth in a key strategic market.
💡 The Solution
✅ Regulatory & Infrastructure Compliance
- Conducted a deep-dive audit of Chinese identity management laws with legal team.
- Collaborated with legal, privacy, and compliance teams to ensure and validate a compliant sign-in path and solution.
- Studied Bing’s implementation of MSA in China as a reference
🔐 Identity & Access Integration (IAM)
- Integrated Microsoft Account (MSA) sign-in via authentication API
- Partnered with engineering to ensure secure, scalable rollout
- Ran phased A/B testing: 5% → 10% → 45% → 100% rollout strategy
- Conducted real-user testing with China-based QA teams
🚀 Driving Adoption & Performance Monitoring
- Implemented real-time monitoring tools post-launch to ensure system stability.
🤝 Cross-Functional Execution
- Orchestrated collaboration between engineering, legal, privacy, and China market stakeholders
- Managed bi-weekly project syncs and reported progress to executive teams,
📈 The Impact
- ✅ 4M DAUs gained according to modelling tool
- ✅ 100M additional annual pageviews according to modelling tool
- ✅ Unlocks personalized experiences for China users (signed-in) (e.g. content recommendations)
- ✅ Fully compliant with China’s data, privacy, and IAM regulations
- ✅ Improved user satisfaction and retention in a previously underserved market
🧠 What I Did
- Owned the end-to-end enablement strategy for sign-in in China
- Led compliance and tech discovery, identifying implementation opportunities.
- Managed cross-team delivery and phased experimentation
- Ensured post-launch stability and stakeholder alignment
🔍 Key Learnings
International expansion isn’t just about translating text — it’s about understanding infrastructure, regulation, and user expectations at a local level. This project showed how targeted, compliant product decisions can unlock enormous value in high-growth markets.