Gumtree
Boost platform vibrancy with better ad quality
UX Design
UI Design
Usability Testing
Client
Gumtree
Date
2019
Role
Senior Product Designer
Website
gumtree.com.au
Overview
As one of the biggest online marketplace in Australia, Gumtree wanted to increase the number of listings and buyers/sellers interactions. There’s also an increased number of bad quality ads across the site, which has impacted the overall ads discoverability, buyers/sellers success and retentions.
We want to understand what characteristics would make an ad performs better, by explorations and testings.
My Role
As the lead designer in seller's experience, my challenge was to encourage sellers to provide better quality information in their ads, all without adding more stress and effort needed to post an ad. The team has a strong assumption that the lengthy Post Ad form is the main cause that our ad listing rate has decreased.
Bringing the team along to ideate for the seller’s journey.
Insights and Opportunities
From analytics, we know better ad titles and item attributes attracts buyer replies. In my heuristic evaluation, it’s also not hard to find ads with poor information and listed in wrong categories. This could greatly impact discoverability of the ads. So my hypothesis is - If we allow sellers to post an ad with ease by provide on-screen guidance, relevant tips and data, they are more likely to improve their ads by following recommendations. This will ultimately improve ad relevancy and discoverability.
We’ve selected a few ideas to prototype and test - including a title suggester, pricing and attributes guidance, and ad improvement recommendations.
The Result
Through usability testing we’ve found that:
- The guidance can help making category selection easier
- Sellers want to compare their prices with other listings
- Auto filling in the form would make it easier to fill in ad details
- Sellers wants to know how to improve their ad by receiving tips
The successfully tested ideas became part of the product roadmap and I continue working with engineers to design and build out these features for A/B testings.
We saw a 2.1% increase on buyer replies on Home and Garden on the first 3 months, and a 6.2% increase on attribute searches.