Redesigning Catalog for Meesho App
Improving catalog and product discovery through browsing
When I first began the research process to improve the catalog section for Meesho App , I wanted to answer these three questions for myself:
- How are people currently using the Meesho app?
- Are users facing any usability issues while using the app?
- If yes, what can I do to help solve these issues through design?
User Research
Meesho app users are primarily housewives who are stay-at-home women who are looking to make an extra living. Other primary user buckets are students, teachers, shop owners & professionals who want to create additional income streams.
In order to inform my critique better, I spoke to 7 users, out of which 4 were existing Meesho users & the other 3 were aware of the Meesho brand but downloaded the app for our conversation.
1. How much time do you spend on the app?
2. What kind of products do you usually share?
3. How many products do you share on an everyday basis?
4. Among products that you share, what is the majority — products asked for by the end buyer or your own recommendations by discount/sale/style, etc.?
5. Who are your end buyers?
6. What are your pain points?
Simultaneously, I asked them to use the Meesho app to achieve these tasks.
Existing App Usability Test
Tasks:
1. Share 1 pair of blue men’s jeans for waist size 38, with me. 2. Share 1 pleated, white cotton saree, with blouse, with me. 3. Share 1 500 mL toilet cleaner with me.
Each user was given 1 minute to complete each task, without using the search bar.
Results:
3 existing users & 1 new user could share a pair of Jeans.
All users who were part of this test were able to find Sarees. 2 existing users & 1 new user could find toilet cleaner.
User Behaviour & Insights
On the basis of my conversations, here is a summary of the responses:
1. Average time spent on app is between 30 min to 45 min every day.
2. Primary categories users explore are women’s clothing, jewelry & kids’ clothing.
3. Users are often looking for particular products demanded by the end buyer.
4. Users find more selling opportunities around events/occasions such as weddings, birthday, festivals, etc.
5. Users are always looking for new products in each category.
Users shopping on Meesho are all looking to make an extra living to supplement their existing incomes. They would primarily sell to these groups:
1. Extended Family
2. Friends, peers & colleagues
3. Neighbors
4. Previous customers & their referrals
With respect to their buying behaviours, these resellers can be broadly classified into showing these behaviours:
1. They want to buy a product that is wanted by a prospective buyer.
2. They are casually browsing for the inventory that could be sold ahead since they have no demand with them
3. They pride themselves with finding the best bargains in their social circles and therefore would recommend ‘great bargain’ products, within the context of buyer
4. First-time shoppers on Meesho platform.
As per my conversations here are some assumptions I made to guide my exercise:
1. Users are well accustomed to e-commerce buying experiences across popular apps like Flipkart, Myntra, etc.
2. Users are looking to make extra income, and hence willing to go an extra mile for learning the usage of Meesho app
3. Users are recommending products in their inner circles, and therefore expect the experience for both their customers & themselves, to be consistent & trustworthy
4. Users often know what clothing, with style & color, is the end buyer looking for.
User Pain Points
With the usability testing, and user interviews, here are few salient pain points I came across:
1. In order to find a product, say Men’s jeans, or Kid’s dungaree, the user has to scroll down to search cards with matching titles. They can’t find cards for all items.
2. User is unable to find what all types of clothing are available for any category. This information could come in handy during the selling process.
Approach Note
In my approach, I have tried to simplify a user’s experience by creating a clear visual hierarchy for product categories & sub-categories.
Here are salient aspects of my argument that guided my re-design of the app:
1. I have placed top-level categories at the top of the home page to aid discovery. This placement would enable users to find products intuitively, thus making the app experience more learnable.
2. Secondly, in order to accommodate all future category expansions, I have included a button that leads the user to an ‘All Categories’ view.
3. When a user clicks on the ‘All Categories’ button, he will be taken to a full-screen window, wherein the top-level categories will be placed in the left, with sub-categories clearly shown towards the right. Each sub-category will have dropdown options giving the ability to further explore sub-sub-categories.
This approach will also enable the user to get a holistic view of all available categories of products, along with better learnability of the depth/hierarchy. In essence, the user will be able to find any product without using a search, through this feature.
4. I have proposed the creation of a landing page for each category, which will have a list of sub-categories & collections.
5. I recommend using ‘Collections’ as starting points for journeys that do not start from a category or a sub-category. Hence, user journeys for sale, discounts, deal of the day, festival collections, shop for events/occasions & trending products among others, could be the ideal way to drive experiences that start from attributes other than categories.
Currently, the sub-categories listed as Collections leads to a bad experience, since a collection/curation should not be equal to a sub-category.
6. In my design, I have ensured that no landing page should contain cards related to one or more than one of Category, Sub-category & Collections & the final list of items.
In order to ensure consistency in this visual logic, both the app home-page as well as individual landing pages of any category/sub-category/collection does not have any items listed on the same page.
Putting both type of content together creates confusion for the user, and renders placement of Cat/Sub-cat/Collection useless.
7. Each item should represent a unique item and not a cluster of similarly styled items. Discovering a group of similarly styled items is inconsistent with experience in other globally popular e-commerce platforms viz Myntra & Flipkart.
When I make an assumption that sharing could be easier in such representation, there is a visible trade-off in discovery.
My suggestion would be to present each style along with similar styles, such that the user can select information (both images & product description) related to which styles should be shared. However, since this wasn’t a part of the discovery problem, I have not addressed this issue in my design exercise.
Also, with the option to view/share similar styles from each style, the user may be able to share images of styles that are not all too similar but more diverse. This, in turn, could improve the end buyer’s shopping experience.
8. In order to maximize the visibility of items in a single frame/fold of a mobile user, I would recommend showing at least 2 items in each row, given that each of them does not represent a cluster but a unique item. This step will enable our users to discover more styles in one glance.
9. Users can be prompted to use filters while browsing items in a sub-category/collection. This way, otherwise inaccessible options available in filters will become known to users, leading to better search capabilities, without actually using search bar.
Final UI Designs
