Etsy and Creating a Custom Marketplace

Marina Heaney
Jul 25, 2017 · 9 min read

After the sprint of the first project, I was excited and ready to work hard when our second project was introduced. What I was unprepared for was how instead of elbowing and muscling my way through the second project as I had done with the solo-first, it was a team project, and therefore I would be reliant on other people to fill in the gaps of my weaknesses and they on me to do the same.

Other than now having to work with team members, our second project was not open-ended. Not only were we assigned team members, but we were given a client, a clear client task and brief that outlined what needed to be done (the organized, type A, Wendy Wellesley in me was very happy about that).

Task

Our client was the handmade/artisan marketplace, Etsy. For those that are unfamiliar, it is an online marketplace used by artisans to showcase and sell their handmade, quality work. On it, one can find anything from costume pieces, to fine jewelry, baked goods to fine furniture and baby accessoroes.

Our task was broken up into two parts:

  1. Design a user flow that allows customers to post a product request.
  2. Design a user flow that allows artisans to provide quotes for these requests.

Some of the questions we considered even before we started the research process were:

  • What defines ‘custom’?
  • How to implement the bidding process (i.e. stop a potential bid war)
  • What sort of time constraints should be placed on the request?
  • How can we verify artisans to ensure quality bids and avoid spamming?
  • What is the best way to handle the collaborative design process between users — buyers/sellers?
  • When does the seller get paid?

Research and Discovery

After we were able to wrap our heads around the task, we were able to redefine our two user groups as buyers and sellers. We began to do research on Etsy as a company and quickly discovered that they too had made this distinction, as they had two applications: one for their buyers containing the full marketplace, the other a streamlined experience for sellers to run their shops. The buyer’s application appeared to be very straightforward and similar to other marketplace apps. Buyers are able to favorite items, get suggested listings based on favorites and recent searches, a running list of recently viewed items and a relatively simple check out process. Sellers was slightly more complicated. On it, they received store statistics, a place to view store requests, messages from sellers, site activity and a few other metrics.

Business and Competitive Analysis

We began to immerse ourselves in the world of Etsy’s ever-expanding marketplace by figuring out who exactly their users were on both sides, and what they experienced using both the desktop and mobile applications. What sets Etsy appart from other platforms is its promise to provide quality handmade or vintage items to its buyers. Anything that is massed produced is explicitly stated on the website as such. We quickly discovered that Etsy already had a version of the custom function. It existed in the simplest form: buyers were able to send direct requests to sellers through their store platform, a function that appeared to be useful for the personalization of these mass-produced items.

Competitive Analysis

In our competitive analysis, we looked less at the set up of their competitors, and more at how each competitor accomplished the tasks we wished to accomplish. For example, we knew we had to implement a bidding function, so we looked at online marketplaces like Ebay and design services like 99designs to see how they did it. We ended up Frankenstein-ing together aspects of all of these companies in order to create our final designs and prototype.

User Interviews

Once we familiarized ourselves with the world of Etsy, we began to tap into our networks for viable interviewees. We used google surveys to generate a screener survey that was posted to classmates, the #takemysurvey channel on slack and on social media. A member of our group was able to tap into his network of colleagues and friends that exist in the craftsmen sphere while I looked for buyers in my college network. From the screener, we were able to gather 5 buyers and 5 sellers.

Along with the right candidates, another important element was the right questions. Some of these included:

Buyer Questions:

  1. What do you look for when making purchases?
  2. What comes to mind when you think of Etsy?
  3. Have you ever ordered something made to order/custom? Tell me about that experience.

Seller Questions:

  1. What type of items do you make?
  2. How do clients typically contact you/hear about you?
  3. Have you ever made something based solely on a client’s design?

Synthesis

Since each member of our team could not be present during each iterviewm we made sure to take excellent notes and take audio recordings of the interviews. For each interview, each of us was asked to take the top 3 key takeaways that stood out from each interview. These takeaways were entered into one combined spreadsheet with the demographics of our interviewees. The responses and information we received exceeded expectations. So much so that we often had four or five key takeaways for each instead of the pre-determined three. The higher number of takeways allowed us to create larger, more effective affinity maps for both the buyer and seller pools. Within each pool we then further distilled the content into categories of user pain points, desires, or preconceived notions.

Affinity Mapping Exercise

Our ultimate goal during affinity mapping was to get to the heart of each user base and to synthesize all of our findings from 10 unique individuals into 2 personas that that could benefit from our final product. We wanted to find out what the typical buyer experience was when trying to either buy something online or try to find someone that would help bring their custom idea to fruition. On the seller side, we wanted to know what it would take for them to take on custom projects if they didn’t already do so. And if they didn’t what was the reasoning behind this decision. From our synthesis exercise we were again able to take away three key points from both user groups:

Buyers

  1. “I will pay more and wait longer for a unique design.”
  2. “The design process should be transparent and collaborative.”
  3. “I make purchases based on user reviews and buyer incentives.”

Sellers

  1. “I need to be able to work closely with my customer throughout the design process.”
  2. “I would do more custom orders if the project was worth my time and worth my while.”
  3. “I only want to create for people who really appreciate my work and my process.”

Personas

From these distillments, we created two primary personas: Katie Brennan (buyer) and John Faye(seller).

Coming from the custom production world I could really empathize with both Katie and John. As with any type of interaction, having a good communication between the buyer and seller was a topic that was brought up various times with our interviewees. As a former seller, I can speak to the importance of a being able to manage clients expectations especially when working with a product that doesn’t exist outside of the clients head, your hand sketches, and as a line item on an invoice. Since most communication on Etsy was happening in users inboxes we knew that this needed to be updated and enhanced when we introduced a our new feature to the existing platforms.

Ideation/Iteration

The collaborative process from inception to completion of the project was highlighted by all of our seller interviewees as more than just an important part of the job but also as a disincentive for doing custom work. These users would argue that since the process was cumbersome and frustrating they would not take additional jobs because it would not be worth the added time or stress. Knowing that these users needed something that facilitated their process while also presenting their work to the masses, we took to our sketch books and white boards to start our own design process.

Etsy’s current apps are flooded with redundancies and clutter. To tackle our users needs we decided to remove and combine some features to make room for our new custom option. We created a hammer symbol to take on the role of the new custom capability that Etsy would now be offering.We moved the stats icon from the global nav on the bottom and moved it into the overview section of the home screen in order to make room for our new custom function. Within the custom function, we added new features: For You — a screen that displayed recently viewed items, suggested listings based on store type, and editors picks based on a combination of the two, Browse — to allow the user to both search directly for types of bids and browse the Etsy catalogue, and MyBids — a place for the pending bids to live while they waiting to be accepted by buyers. From here we began to iterate a few of the basic screens needed to complete the tasks of either creating or responding to bid listings.

Scenarios and User Testing

Once we had the necessary screens sketched out and a few user flows ready we began our first prototyping in invision. We were eager to test out what we had ready and wanted to get feedback as soon as possible.

Our two main scenarios were:

Seller:

“You have some time in between projects to take on additional work. You want to find a project request on Etsy that fits your particular skill set and place a bid on it.”

Buyer:

“ You were browsing on Pinterest and were inspired by a mermaid crown you saw. You want to create a new listing on Etsy to find an artisan to work with you to bring your design to life.”

I took on the role of designing for the Seller. From our user testing, it appeared that users were successfully able to move through the application and accomplish the task as given. However, a few conventions needed to be updated throughout the process such as wanting feedback when the flow had been posted and wanting all of the information about a bid to be located on one page to streamline communication between the buyer and seller. This feedback led to the creation of a “Success” page and the addition of a “Custom Orders” section inside of the orders function.

Prototype

Attached below are links for our buyer and seller prototypes. Our next steps will encompass more than the application experience. We would like to do further research on the payment methods and time constraints that both the buyers and users share. With this additional information we hope to add features on our prototypes that further help track the progress of each project. We will also want to help Etsy establish guidelines or suggested prices so buyers know what to expect before they even receive their first bid.

https://invis.io/M4CP7F3RU#/244580145_Seller_Home_-_2

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