Gumtree is an online classified website, offering free and paid advertising accross a number of markets.
In 2019, the Ebay Motors Group was formed consisting of Ebay, Gumtree and Motors.co.uk. Following this, Gumtree decided to improve the experience of selling vehicles on their platform.
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.
Project type
Marketplace
Industry
Consumer retail
Role
Product Designer
Duration
2019 - 2020
What I did
Empowering car sellers
Understanding user needs
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.
Designing the MVP customer journey
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.
Testing the new ideas with sellers
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.
Building out ideas for A/B testing
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 & thoughts
The new vehicle seller journey was launched in early 2020 and saw an icnrease in used vehicles being sold and purchased on the platform, which helped the product team hit their OKRs.
I thoroughly enjoyed working on this project and working with the Gumtree product team. I learned a lot about research techniques and the value of testing ideas early on in the design process.