Helping users sell their vehicle online

Project breakdown

In 2019, the Ebay Motors Group was formed. As part of a new strategic focus, Gumtree wanted to improve the experience of selling used vehicles on their platform.

The website was already known for successfully helping people buy and sell smaller, lower value household items, but notn buying an selling used vehicles.

My role

The product team was made up of different squads, each one focusing on a particular part of the customer experience. I worked within the Seller team, focusing on Gumtree's sellers.

The squad consisted of a product manager, several developers, QA's and business analysts.

Price guidance

One tool I worked on extensively was a Price Guidance tool, the main aim of the tool was to give users a straight forward way to value, advertise and sell their vehicle online.

The main challenge facing the platform centered around a lack of trust between buyers and sellers of higher value items such as vehicles, so this needed to be addressed.

Research

I wanted to understand the goals of users and their JTBD when selling a vehicle. We understood users behaviour when selling lower value items on the platform, but not vehicles.

I conducted a series of interviews and a task analysis session with people who had previously used Gumtree to sell a vehicle as well as some people who have used competitor platforms.

What I found:

• Broad JTBD - the overall car selling journey has lots of steps to consider, and posting an online advertisment is just a small part of it
• Complexity - most users assumed that the car selling process was inherently difficult and challenging
  
• Lack of trust - most users did not see Gumtree as a reliable place to sell a car compared to a site such as Autotrader
• Vehicle value - most users did not have a easy way to understand the market value of the vehicle they wanted to sell

Wireframing

Insights gained through research were shared with the product team. and working closely with the product manager, I started to design an MVP of the optimised seller journey.

The goal here was to design a series of steps that would take users from start to finish when posting an ad to sell their car, making the process as smooth and frictionless as possible.

Goals:

• Vehicle valuation - provide users with an estimate of their vehicle’s value and be transparent about how we calculate it
• Ad creation - give users a simple and straightforward way to create an ad based on the potential value of their vehicle
  
• Trust & community - showcase a vibrant community of buyers and sellers operating in a trustworthy way

Landing page

I designed a landing page that would serve as an entry point for potential sellers on Gumtree. Users were prompted to submit their vehicle registration to get an idea of it's value.

My assumption was that if someone was interested in finding out how much their vehicle was worth, they were at least partially interested in selling it.

Vehicle valuation

After a user has checked the price of their vehicle, they are taken to the second step in the journey. Here they are prompted to begin creating their advert to sell their vehicle.

I wanted to draw attention to the fact that some users had sold their vehicle in as little as 48 hours and continued to re-enforce the 'Easy as 1-2-3' messaging.

Create ad

At this step the user is asked to complete the remaining fields required to post their ad. This includes adding things like images, contact details and purchasing ad upsell options.

I used the progress indicator at the top of the page to show that they only had one step left and then their ad would be live on Gumtree.

Post ad

The final step of the journey prompted users to either sign-in or register for a new account, as having an account on Gumtree is required to post an ad.

Once a they had done this, they would then be able to view their ad and make any final adjustments before posting it. After posting the ad, users are able to share it on social media.

User testing

The new journey was tested in-person and online with a small cohort of users. I tested the prototype in-person and conducted preference tests online for different page layouts.

Doing both the in-person testing and the online preference tests gave me a well-rounded set of feedback that allowed me to identify improvements in the journey and page layouts.

What I found:

• Users did not immediatley understand that posting an ad on Gumtree was free. This was partially because they had always assumed this to be the case but they also felt the messaging around this was not as clear as it could have been.
• Users did not understand how we calculated the potential value of their vehicle and felt they needed more information around this to feel confident enough to post an ad on Gumtree.
• Overall the optimised journey recieved positive feedback. In the walkthrough, users felt like they were able to understand the journey and use it easily to complete their intended tasks. In the preference tests, the design and layout recieved positive feedback.
• Despite our efforts, trust and security was still a persistent issue that came up in the feedback. However, we found this is largely down to user's perception of the Gumtree brand as whole and thefore was a much broader issue that extended beyond this individual piece of work.

Variant testing & MVP design

Using the Gumtree brand guidelines and design system, I then designed a visual style for the journey and created several versions of the landing page with small variations in layout.

I worked closely with the product and development teams to build an MVP version of the journey that was then released and tested with real users on the Gumtree platform.

Outcomes

Shortly after the MVP had been released, my contract with Gumtree came to an end. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the talented product team and Gumtree and feel proud that my efforts contributed to their success as a marketplace to buy and sell used vehicles.