Background
Oreka.vn is a Vietnamese online marketplace for buying and selling used items. Our mission is to protect the environment and foster a circular economy. Unlike other platforms ( such as Chợ Tốt, Facebook Marketplace,…) which simply connect buyers and sellers, Oreka offers a comprehensive service from upload product to delivery for buyers.
Biz Constaint
Oreka's security concerns prevented the implementation of direct chat function. The current communication flow relied on Oreka's operations team who act as intermediaries between buyers and sellers, creating a slow and inefficient process. This lack of direct interaction left buyers frustrated and unable to confidently make purchase decisions.
Problem Finding
Feedback from Oreka buyers, sellers, and operation team consistently revealed the challenges associated with the existing communication flow:
Buyer Challenges
Lack of Information: buyers often felt they didn’t have enough information to motivate them to make a purchase decision.
Difficult Communication: the current process of contacting sellers through Oreka's operation team was perceived as slow, cumbersome, and frustrating.
High Abandonment Rate: over 90% of buyers who attempted to ask questions through the existing system abandoned their purchases due to the perceived difficulty.
Operation Challenges
This inefficient communication process placed a heavy burden on the operations team, who spent significant time manually mediating communication between buyers and sellers. This strained resources and hindered their ability to focus on other critical tasks.
Limited Information from Seller
Because Oreka's sellers are primarily individual users rather than professional online retailers, they often lack the experience and knowledge to create comprehensive product listings. This results in limited information, which can make it challenging for buyers to make informed purchase decisions.
Objective & Goal
What we’ll build 💬
Our objective was to design a solution that facilitated seamless communication between buyers and sellers on the Oreka platform (no chat), leading to increased user engagement, reduced operational workload, and a significant increase in completed orders.
How we'll measure success 🏁
Increase engagement: we want users to feel like they're part of the community and actively participate. This will make the marketplace more exciting while keeping things safe and secure. We think we can increase the number of completed orders by around 20%
Reduce operational workload: we aim to cut manual tasks by 50%, reducing from 2 hours to 1 hours.
Creative time 🧠
Based on the problem statement above, i conducted research on some competitors and drafted several ideas. Below is a summary of our best ideas:
Evaluate and Decide ✅
We discussed the feasibility of this with our development team, considering factors like cost, manpower, and time. We also assessed the potential impact on user experience, revenue, and operations.
We decided to go with a commenting feature that's similar to what you see on social networks.
Wireframe to test
We created a prototype and conducted usability testing with 5 sellers and 5 buyers. Here are the results:
User Success: 9/10 users successfully completed their tasks on the platform without requiring additional assistance.
Task Completion Time: on average, buyers completed their tasks in 90 seconds, while sellers took around 120 seconds.
User Satisfaction: the new feature was well-received, with sellers rating their satisfaction at 8/10 and buyers giving it a perfect 9/10.
In addition, based on our findings, we'll focus on improving the user experience by:
Improving seller training: ensuring all sellers understand how to effectively manage customer inquiries.
Enhancing button visibility: making it easier for buyers to ask questions.
Streamlining seller workflows: helping sellers stay organized and respond to questions promptly.
Setting clear expectations: providing buyers with a better understanding of when they can expect a response."
Welcome to my soluton 👀
In our MVP, we developed fundamental features to test their efficacy. We defined functions of each role
Buyers can: view a list of public questions posted by sellers, create new questions.
Sellers can: view a list of all questions, answer questions, edit answers, manage all questions for all products.
Admins can: manage all questions from all sellers, edit the public/private type, allow or disallow seller edits, edit answers, and more.
And to types of questions
Private questions: only the seller and buyer can view these questions.
Public questions: all buyers can view these questions. To ensure a smooth initial phase, both sellers and admins can set the question type.
Buyer: add new question
On the product detail page, when a buyer wants more information, they can ask a new question, similar to commenting on a social network. Users can create a new question, upload images or videos, and add the product to their favorites list if they want to view it again later
Seller: have notification and reply
Without needing the operation team, sellers can receive notifications (in-app and via email) and proactively respond to buyers' questions. We will remind the seller via phone if there is no response after 24 hours.
And more…..
We build our product across three platforms: app, web-pc, and web-mobile.
