LiveAuctioneers offers a shipping service to sellers. But some sellers choose to ship orders with third-party carriers like UPS. However, the experience was not good: Sellers couldn't provide shipping quotes upfront, and buyers couldn't track orders on LiveAuctioneers.
Our shipping service can provide shipping costs upfront, and we earn revenue through markup. Therefore, we want to build a solution for those sellers and transition them to our platform smoothly, so both buyers and sellers can have a better shipping experience.
The design process was not linear. I went through several rounds of iterations based on the feedback from users, engineers, account managers, and stakeholders.
At this step, the goal was to map out sellers' current shipping workflow through a series of key questions. Such as:
❓ When and how do they pack? - Sellers only start packing after receiving payments. Most items are not pre-packed.
❓ Do they charge a handling fee? If yes, how? - Most of them do. Some charge on a case-by-case basis, and some use a fixed amount.
❓ Do they need to make changes? - They often need to adjust the box size or number of boxes.
Based on the answers, I mapped out their current workflow and a happy path after using our product. Then worked with engineers and PM to list out the potential features we need in each step.
I kept testing my design with sellers and adjusting our roadmap based on the feedback. I was able to confirm which features are the most essential to sellers, and the things sellers don't need, such as accurate shipping quotes or email notifications.
The first few sellers who tried the MVP said everything worked great. They also said that because of the transparent information, they received fewer shipping inquiries from buyers.
We also saw +11% bidders, +16% visits, +27% bids per item, and +19% bids per bidder in those sellers' auctions, which was as expected.
In the interviews and tests, I noticed that even though sellers may operate differently, but they all tried to achieve the same goals:
• Fewer clicks, fewer files
• Faster order searching
• Quicker turnaround times
• Reduced buyer inquiries
