UX/UI Case Study: Increasing the conversion rate on a secondhand marketplace
How I redesigned Izidore’s platform by conducting User Research and defining a UI Strategy
And the Ironhack Bootcamp came to an end. Finally, it was time to work on our Final Project. And this time, the challenge was different. This time, we had the chance to work on a real challenge.
For my final project and for 2 weeks, I had the pleasure to work with a french startup — Izidore.
What is Izidore?
Izidore was created in February 2018. It puts in contact people that are moving out of their houses and that need to sell all their furniture (to whom I will call ‘sellers’) and people that are furnishing their houses and want to buy furniture (to whom I will call ‘buyers’).
Why the name?
Izidore is an old first name. The founders of the project chose it to emphasize the vintage aspect that usually comes with buying secondhand. In English, it can be read “easy” and “door”, the value proposition they want to provide to their users (both sellers and buyers).
Part I: User Research
Izidore’s challenge
For this project, the challenge was to encourage users to buy their first item on the platform. This means that, although Izidore’s business model is a two-sided market (sellers and buyers), the scope of this project were buyers — they were my focus.
Setting the objectives
To kick-off the project, I first defined my objectives. In order to complete the challenge I needed to understand:
- The process of buying furniture
- The process of buying secondhand
- What could be potentially preventing buyers from converting in the already existing platform
And so, I conducted the following experiments:
For the interviews, I talked with:
- 4 potential users. People that had to furnish their homes recently or were in the process of doing it, so I could understand how was/is their process of buying furniture and how they feel about buying secondhand.
- 3 sellers of secondhand furniture. People that have experience with buyers. My goal here was to understand what are the concerns and requests of the people that are buying secondhand.
- 1 Izidore buyer. Someone that purchased many items from the website to understand how was the experience, what could have made the conversion and what could make the experience better.
- 1 Izidore user. Someone that regularly visits the website but never bought an item, to understand why this person was using it and what could be preventing her from purchasing an item.
Insights, get them all!
Fortunately, from all these tests, I was able to learn many things — but too many for the scope of this project. To help me figure out the most important ones, I built an Affinity Diagram and I asked users to vote on the most important topics.
The users that were part of this experiment were:
- 1 potential buyer
- 1 current buyer of the platform
- 1 seller
- And me
And the most voted topics were 🥁:
1. Inspiration
Users usually look for inspiration before buying furniture. They often look on Pinterest or Instagram and they like to wander at furniture stores to see displayed rooms so they can get ideas for their own homes.
This is also true for Izidore. The team found that if sellers post pictures of entire rooms, they are 8 times more likely to sell their items. This is because:
- Buyers get ideas of entire rooms for their own houses
- They can see how clean the house is, which increases the confidence in the seller and leverages the conversion
2. Details
After having an idea of what to buy, users are then concerned about the details and specificities of the items. Even if searching online, they find the need to go to the store to see the fabric, the dimensions, the color, etc.
The concern is even higher when buying secondhand: buyers ask many questions to sellers: if there are defects, for how long it exists, if the person has pets, if the house is smoke-free, more pictures of the items, etc — 🥵.
3. Logistics
After buying the items, logistics is a huge pain. When users buy at regular furniture stores they need to have it delivered which is highly costly, takes many months to arrive and they need to be at home to receive it.
It is also complicated when buying secondhand. Buyers and sellers need to agree on a date, on a place and a medium to exchange. Many times they lose opportunities because they cannot agree on all these factors.
4. Other interesting information
Izidore’s stakeholder, Manon, very nicely gave me some interesting insights about the current usage of the platform. I found that:
- The average number of items that buyers buy at the platform is 1.2, which means that although they want to get inspired, most of the times they are not buying entire rooms, but individual items.
- Around 70% of visits on the platform are made through mobile phones, which means that the responsive version of the website is the priority.
Enough with the insights, let’s define!
With these experiments, I understood that are different types of Personas on the secondhand market:
I defined the Persona that ‘buys furniture in different stores and doesn’t mind buying secondhand’ to be the most interesting one for this project: Marta, the home lover.
To identify the most important pain points and expectations she has when buying secondhand, I put together Marta’s User Journey:
I was then able to define the ultimate goal of the project:
‘Why?’, you may ask?
- Helping Mart put together her cosy home can make her feel more enthusiastic about the items on the platform and to get even better ideas to furnish her house, increasing the chance of finding something that she likes.
- And making the process smooth would make Marta reach the end of the process and actually buy an item on the platform.
Brain sparkles, here they come!
After conducting the research and defining the elements I needed to work on, it was time to ideate on what features would help me achieve the How Might We question.
Izidore’s marketplace is already very strong. They identified many issues on the market and they provide solutions that are working. So it didn’t make sense to ideate on a completely new concept for a solution. Therefore, my strategy was to come up with a new structure and new elements that would make Marta’s journey closer to her needs.
To be or not to be…
At this time, the question if I should make a native app or a web app came to my mind. Izidore only has a web app and I believe it could make sense to invest in building a native app since it can add a lot of value to the purchases’ management (with notification for example). However, since the objective of my project was to increase the conversion of people that are buying the first item, I decided to work on a web app.
Making it happen
After this decision, I designed a new structure for the platform — the Sitemap — and tested it by conducting a Card Sorting experiment.
I also defined a User Flow to exemplify Marta’s new journey on the marketplace, until the purchase. This was the biggest challenge until now: I had to change it many times during the whole process. I learned that secondhand marketplaces are very complex and that there are many interactions needed between the buyer and the seller (that’s why it is so big).
After having the flow mapped, I finally started to build the Paper Prototypes for this new flow.
Testing, testing, testing,… and moving on to Mid-fidelity.
And… testing, testing, testing again! After understanding what could be improved, I was ready to move on into the User Interface 💪🏼.
Part II: UI Strategy
Until now, I’ve been using Izidore’s current brand in all images and graphs. That is because I was mostly concerned about the users’ journey and usability of the platform.
But at this point, I identified a huge opportunity at Izidore’s positioning, something that came from the User Research, on a brainstorming session and also on a conversation with Manon, the founder of Izidore:
Let’s make Izidore the IKEA of the secondhand market!
And, there is actually enough space in the market to do it. The Resale market is increasing more and more and is expected to be bigger than the Fast Fashion market in 2028.
There are many secondhand marketplaces but almost none can deliver an experience like the most successful furniture stores. To achieve this is objective it was crucial to make appealing, credible and simple, a huge challenge on a market so complex!
Getting inspired
To start, I did a Competitors’ Analysis to check what other players were doing well and that I could potentially adopt in the platform. I checked:
- Other secondhand furniture marketplaces that were going towards this positioning in other countries, such as AptDeco and Vinted.
- Regular furniture stores such as IKEA and Zara Home because these are Marta’s top of mind brands.
- Platforms that Marta uses for inspiration, such as Instagram and Pinterest because this is one of her main tasks when buying furniture.
Setting the tone
This exercise gave me enough ideas to put my mood board together. I defined the pictures and colors that represented the brand values, that came from the User Research, from the interview with Manon and from analyzing the industry:
Trust / Inspiration / Cosyness / Details / Quality / Design / Clean / Simple / Vintage
I analyzed the current logo and I decided to build a new one that would make Izidore closer to the positioned I defined:
‘Why this logo?’
- I choose the font Playfair Display, a serif font (for the vintage aspect) that is currently being widely used on the web (for the modern and mass-market feeling it needs to express).
- I also decided to put the ‘izi’ in italic to give it a sense of movement, for the idea of being an “easy door” to the users.
- Finally, I defined an icon that can be used for the favicon and for the app icon (in case one is build). I decided to use the ‘z’ because it was one of the strongest elements, containing very interesting serifs that also represented very well the movement aspect.
On to Figma!
After, I moved on to Figma where I designed the Style Tile. Again, this was an ongoing process throughout the project. I built it gradually according to each screen’s needs. Here is the final version:
And finally, I was so ready to build the High-Fidelity version of Izidore’s brand new platform:
What’s new?
Getting inspired in context
On the current platform, when searching for an item, buyers have to go through entire apartments and look for something that they like. On one side, this seemed to be very interesting since it gives buyers ideas. But on the other, it also appeared to be a bit confusing. If they wanted to buy one specific item it was less interesting having to go through other rooms of the apartment (e.g. looking for a sofa and having to go through pictures of kitchens, bedrooms, etc).
Therefore, I decided to organize the content by areas of living, instead of entire apartments, giving more contextualized ideas to the items they are searching for. From here, if they like a style from a specific seller, they can access other rooms from his/her apartment.
Trust all over the place
Also when going through the home page, Marta can see the most important information she needs to feel secure: (1) how to use it; (2) how to be refunded; (3) some curated and nice pictures of rooms with Izidore’s stamp on it (meaning that Izidore’s team has looked at the ads and certified some of the sellers); (4) and reviews of people that previously bought on the platform (the last two bullet points were already being used in the platform).
Content adapted to buyers’ location
In the current platform, Marta can search for items in specific locations. But because I included new and curated content in the platform, she can now set her location and the content of the whole website will adapt to it.
Out of sight, out of mind
One of the main buyers’ frustrations that came out in the interviews was finding something that they liked but that was not available. If Marta is looking for a specific item, she might not be interested in seeing apartments that don’t have it for sale. Same for availability and location: why should Marta see items that are not available when she needs them or that are too far from her home? She will fall in love with something and because it’s not available she will look for it in other stores.
Want the filthy details? Just ask! 2.0
Ok, I know this is not new at all. But from the User Testings, I found that many times when buyers want details about a specific item, they send a message to the seller, leaving the product’s page. The information of an item will then be scattered on the message’s page and on the product’s page. Now, they can attach the product’s card to a message, allowing Marta and the seller to have all the information in their conversation.
I can, but you can’t. You can, but I can’t.
It’s not easy to agree on a date to make the exchange — it can even be a deal-breaker. Now, Marta can know in advance the available pick-up date for each item. Also, when requesting to buy an item, she can send the seller her availability in advance to avoid back and forth messages.
Final Presentation
At the end of these 2 weeks of work, each of us on from the Design Squad 102 had to present it on the Hackshow, the ultimate and final presentation of all.
After the presentation, everyone in the audience gave a score to each project. There was also a technical jury that voted for the three best projects.
And the winner was… Izidore’s brand new platform!
All good things come to an end
It was by far the most intense project and I had so much fun! I tried to use all the learnings that I gathered during the Ironhack Bootcamp and I believe this was one of the most important elements for the success of the project.
🙏🏼 I’m extremely thankful to my Lead Teacher Agathe Pommery, my TA’s Ashley Carr, Ângela Sousa and Ana Marques, my classmates, all the guests and experts that came to help and to Manon that was very open-minded throughout the project.
It was the best way to end this journey — I’m now ready to move on to new adventures!
