My honest UX case study on OfferUp

Overview

OfferUp is the largest mobile marketplace in the US. People can buy and sell locally easily. The app is known to be a community based sales platform that allows users to list and sell items directly on the app. Similar to Craigslist or eBay, sellers can create their own descriptions of the product, name their price, and interact with interested buyers. While known for marketing its use to local buyers and sellers.

Several things differentiate the app from other similar eCommerce platforms. One perk is the built-in camera feature (Fig 1.2) which allows for easy uploading of product photos. OfferUp also integrates a peer-to-peer rating system which motivates better user behavior, keeping security and transparency as top priorities. When a buyer makes an offer on an item and the seller accepts, OfferUp prompts the users to find a public location for the exchange and warns against sharing personal numbers or emails.

Context

My Role

Sole UX/UI designer

Who I work with

Product manager, UX researchers, Content strategist, Engineers, Data analyst, Customer experience team

About OfferUp

• Largest mobile marketplace in the US
• 280+ employees
• 4.8 stars / 3.5M ratings in App Store, 5 stars / 1M+ ratings in Google Play

Challenge: Improve the App Experience

The high-level goals are:

1. examine metrics, user flow and usability in regards to search results and item discoverability then point out some issues.
2. Monitor metrics and improve completion rate

Metrics

As a C2C product, there are 4 metrics we are looking at:

1. Acceptance rate, decline rate, expiration rate
2. Completion rate
3. Engagement rate
4. Retention rate

Design principles

• Simple and easy
• Trust and safety

Process

1. Understand

Metrics

NPS survey

Competitor analysis

2. Design

Design sprint

Sketch

Prototyping

3. Research

Surveys

Usability studies

A/B testings

4. Evaluate & repeat

Launch features incrementally

Concerns.

Concern 1

Difficult to determine the shelf-life of an item.

Explanation

Search results can be filtered using several different criteria: newest, closest, price low to high, and price high to low (Fig 2.1). The default setting is to sort results from newest to oldest. This is useful for these garage-sale type of listings since they typically are unique and have only 1 “in-stock,” not to mention it is also preferred by most users (see Appendix A).

However, it is unclear while browsing how long items have been listed or if the user selling the item is active. Some listings are weeks or months old which raises the question of if the listing is still relevant.

To demonstrate this point, pictured below are the search results for ‘metal trash can’ filtered newest to oldest (Fig 2.2). In the second row is an item that is already 3 months old (Fig 2.3). With 60% of people expecting top search results to be new as of that week and 100% agreeing that knowing the date is helpful, stating this information up-front could be beneficial for users (see Appendix A).

Solution

The date is known and recorded within the OfferUp ecosystem but is only displayed on the item page. This information could be presented to the user on the initial search page, similar to Craigslist (Fig 2.4). Alternatively, and perhaps more aligned with the OfferUp aesthetic, search results could be broken up into generic time denominations such as “Posted today,” “Posted last week,” “Posted last month,” etc. (Fig.2.5).

Concern 2

The endless scrolling method inhibits engagement and reduces search integrity.

Explanation

On the OfferUp app home page and search results pages, a user can continuously scroll down without ever reaching a bottom or footer. New products load automatically with each swipe (Fig 3.1). In UX parlance, this is often referred to as an infinite scroll. While the infinite scroll is a common feature on eCommerce sites intended to increase user engagement, studies conducted by Baymard Institute (1) have found otherwise:

“[Infinite] scrolling can be downright harmful to usability — in particular, for search results and on mobile.” (1)

The results of the study show that while users will search for longer periods of time with infinite scrolling, the click-throughs to specific products decrease as focus changes from a few specific items to the wide breadth of items in a category. Users are also more likely to lose their place within the longer scrolls.

Solution

In order to narrow the user’s focus and facilitate engagement with particular items, it is recommended that eCommerce mobile sites use a combination of the “lazy load” with a “load more” button (Fig 3.2). Similar to an infinite scroll, a lazy load will only generate the first 15–30 items, intermittently loading them until finally stopping at a “load more” button. This button gives the user enough pause to go back and consider the items they’re already seen.

Additionally, if the “load more” break occurred between set chronological intervals, the searcher would better distinguish between where newer options end and stale items begin (Fig 3.3).

Concern 4

Sold listings appear in the search criteria.

Having a sold item appear in a search feels disorienting and counterproductive. When browsing for a specific item to purchase, it doesn’t make sense that an unavailable listing populates (Fig 4.1). In a qualitative inquiry in which participants were asked to reflect on their preference regarding such items, the majority indicated they would prefer to not see sold items in their search results (see Appendix A).

One theory is that OfferUp could be showing sold items to create a sense of urgency with potential buyers which translate to more transactions. More likely, though, it is a side effect of users mismanaging their accounts and not properly archiving sold items.

Concern 3

Lack of commitment

A lot of sellers don't show up once a meetup place has been set up, this can lead to a very bad experience to the seller, which could impact the App review on the AppStore.

Solution

Based on the results from the NPS survey and usability study, I came up with 3 design tenants solution :

1. We give sellers the choice to charge a $5 fee or not. Their judgment is fair enough to make sure buyers are happy with the results.
2. If the sale expires after 6 days, buyers need to confirm the reason why they let the sale expired. If it’s the buyer’s fault, sellers can choose to charge the $5 fee.
3. Punishment can’t happen before education. If users don’t know how to use this feature, we can’t punish them.

Concern 4

Lack of value

I designed a new set of chat components to show the value upfront for users.

Methods:

1. Competitor analysis: Componentize analysis
2. Usability study: Both in-person and remotely

Wireframe

Conclusion

A robust and well-designed platform for second-hand goods, OfferUp creates a unique opportunity for local residents to hawk their wares. By adjusting a couple of the search functionalities outlined above, the app has the potential to really outshine all the competition. Adding dates to search results, changing the scrolling mechanisms, providing more value, resolving the commitment issue, and removing sold items would all enhance the usability of this relatively new marketplace app.

By Cyriac Ndo Zeh, UX UI Designer.

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