Lessons learned from IKEA on how to inspire and engage our buyers
The IKEA catalog
One of my good friends is a huge IKEA catalog enthusiastic. The day the IKEA catalog popped in his mailbox was a celebration day and it seems like he was not the only one to react this way. In 2017 IKEA catalog was the most widely circulated book — more than the Bible, the Quaran, and even Harry Potter. In 2021, after 70 years of print, the Ikea catalog became paperless, an online catalog experience only and this print stop has caused some emotional reactions with its fans.
What makes a product catalog so exciting that it has its fan base? (IKEA opened its museum and exhibition to walk us through the historic catalogs). Ikea’s philosophy is that it is not selling furniture as much as it is aiming “To create a better everyday life for the many people.”
The IKEA catalog goes beyond displaying the inventory of the store, it is showcasing the potential of what can be created with its inventory. It is inspiring you beyond your original intent (to buy a sofa) to a greater vision (add some cushions and a carpet and remodel your living room). By showing you the potential (and the happiness of the people living in the IKEA world) it becomes tangible and possible to go beyond the original narrow need to a much wider one.
I don’t know anybody that came into an IKEA store with a list and came out of it with only the listed items. The catalog experience is embodied in the physical stores as well where the vision of life in the IKEA furnished homes becomes a visual reality.
The Fiverr marketplace
Fiverr is a freelance marketplace connecting buyers and sellers. With over 4M active Buyers (Q3, 2021), Fiverr is a huge success. Like IKEA, a buyer in the Fiverr marketplace can search for the specific service they need and order it. How can we expose our buyers to more of the Fiverr potential? Can we use a similar method to the IKEA catalog to inspire our buyers and expand their intent?
Inspire
How can we inspire our buyers to do more in the marketplace? How can we educate them about what the marketplace has to offer them?
With so many buyers and sellers on the marketplace creating original content, we have a lot of samples of beautiful work, all made on Fiverr. If we find a way to show you this eye-catching work made on the platform, we could inspire you to do great things with us. Challenge accepted!
First, we tackled the curation challenge (led by Shay Livnat -SL). We have so many work samples; we wanted to make sure we don’t overload our buyers with too much information and show them only the best ones. We ended up with a growing database of beautiful work samples made on Fiverr from active sellers on the marketplace.
Similar to the way you would find the dining table next to kitchen appliances in the IKEA catalog, we assumed that if you were in the market for a service s.a. Logo Design, then you might also be interested in branding guidelines, business cards, and a business website. We mapped the correlated needs so we can expose our buyers to more relevant services, beyond their (possibly narrow) original intent, this way adding the personalized touch.
The experience itself had to be delightful, native mobile, and very enticing visually. We wanted to convey the feeling of endless possibility by allowing endless scrolling and a rabbit hole experience that allows the buyer to navigate between different services offered in Fiverr.
This personalized, quality, and fresh feed is aiming to create an engaging experience that buyers will want to visit repeatedly. Through this experience, Fiverr will inspire its users with infinite ideas that turn into even greater projects and help them envision the endless ways in which Fiverr can help their business grow.
Some press coverage on the launch from Techcrunch and Businesswire.
