Suppliers’ Catalog

ios · android · web

Challenge and Value

Insights from research showed that users with small or medium businesses often seek suppliers, which takes a lot of time and effort: checking suppliers’ legal data, integrity, reviews and so on. We determined that having suppliers catalog in one place is crucial for such users, since they want to find verified suppliers quickly, instead of spending huge amount of times searching and verifying suppliers data themselves.

My role

Designed new userflow patterns for SERP for supplier focused ranking mode. Co-led visionary and concept work with product owner, and was responsible for end-to-end design, collaborated with developers, UX-research and analytics.

+6,3% up: Daily target users of business space after the launch
+8% up: Users with activity (target contacts, adding to favorites, etc)
>38%: Usage activities (expected around 30%)

Three mobile screens: the business-oriented entry screen with a Suppliers’ Catalog service, a search results screen introducing the new Suppliers tab, and supplier results showing verified suppliers with example products.

Problem definition

It consumes around 70% of the time for a small/medium businesses to find a suitable supplier for their business. They want to find a reliable supplier, but there's no such platforms which would show the goods/services a supplier can provide. Since we are creating a special space for business users, we propose that the classified ads service is a perfect place to find a suitable supplier.

Discovery Process

Quantitative Interviews

During interviews we wanted to determine several factors — how do our users search for suppliers and what information is crucial for decision making:

Conducted 10 in-depth interviews with users together with PO, and learned their main pain points and patterns for search.
Conducted Card sorting to determine which information will be useful while making a decision to text/call a supplier.
Researched competitors and conducted benchmarking on how we can make sure users find our feature intuitive and easy to use.

User voice and pain points

“We spend lots of time and resources to find a supplier and check them. It can take days and weeks”
“Difficult to find suppliers: there’s no base for verified suppliers”
“Risks of encountering dishonest and unreliable sellers or low-quality products”
“There are difficulties finding non-standard equipment. It requires extra effort to find such suppliers”
“You usually have to consider several factors: a good price, the supplier’s reputation, and delivery speed. Decisions need to be made very quickly.”

Benchmarking and UX Testings

I did a competitive analysis and research before diving into design and prototypes. After the analysis was done, we had two rounds of UX testings where we gathered positive feedback from from all 5 users.

Research board: interview notes and competitor benchmarking of mobile apps and desktop sites.

User flow board with two flows through the search and supplier screens.

Solution

After all the key points of the research were gathered, I proceeded to concept creation. I've decided that in order to make the search seamless, we need to create another "view" for our SERP: suppliers with items examples in addition to just items SERP.

Of course I tested prototypes on users, and confirmed this hypothesis: our seamless solution was really working during our UX-testing! I could not be more happier.

Learnings

Talking to your users is the key to implementing a product they really need. With understanding of users' pain points we were able to make a product from scratch, a product people are actually using. We were really happy when learned that the usage of the catalog is greater than we expected it!