Designing an app that helps online resellers to cut listing creation time by 85%
Online resellers find it hard and time consuming to list a product. Every time they spend from 40 up to 120 mins, and the final result (the amount they get from selling an item) is not proportional to their effort. They usually sell item for a suitable price, that generates low profits or sometimes losses. Most of the times they give up and just give away their items for free or throw them away.
I analyzed the situation and the needs of online resellers, to design an app that helps them to speed up the workflow, helps them to easily track the best price to sell an item and generate more revenue from their sales.
TEAM - Product designer (me), CTO, Project Manager
MY ROLE - I led the whole design process, from initial research to implementation
PROJECT SCOPE - Designing a totally new B2C mobile app, in 3 weeks
YEAR - 2024
DEFINING THE BUSINESS GOAL AND THE USER IMPACT
Venato aims to cut the time online resellers spend to list a product, and help them to maximize their profit.
The app aims to be a user friendly environment where, with only few actions, online resellers can take a picture of their product, find the best price and list an item online (also on multiple marketplaces). The AI behind Venato will find the best prices for the user and provide them with a SEO optimized description, for increasing the visibility of their items.
The app aims to target both casual online resellers, who wants to make some profit from selling items they don’t use anymore, and also collectors.
Thanks to the portfolio feature of Venato, collectors can create a portfolio of their items and track their value during time. This helps them to figure the best time when listing their items on the market, to get the highest retunr from them.
1/4 - Initial research, for understanding user’s needs and the situation on the market
First of all I went through a qualitative research with some users, to understand the current status of the situation and their needs. Thanks to my research, I understood that:
the most time consuming tasks for them are finding a suitable price for their items and creating a product description optimized for every marketplace
on the market there are different tools that help cross-listing in few steps, but none of them has a feature that helps users to find items prices in shorter time
some of the users interviewed were collector, who also would like a feature that help them to keep track of their inventory and its value over time
2/4 Elaborating the insights of the research for finding a solution
Based on the insights I got from the initial research, I started to define the key features and the main user flows of the app. My research lead, as well as the meetings with the CTO and the Project Manager, helped me to define 3 key features for Venato:
a feature that helps users to generate the product description, after taking a picture of the item, thanks to the AI
a price calculator, always AI driven, which finds the best price range for selling an item
a portfolio, where users could create an inventary of their products or collections and keep track of its value over time
During my research, I conducted some competitor analysis for analyzing recurring patterns on their platforms, as well as features that could've been improved in Venato.
3/4 - Working on the main features, for optimizing the delivery time
Since the project was meant to be completed in 3 weeks, after which we would’ve pitched the idea to an investor committee, I primarly focused on designing the 3 key features of the app.
I started by designing some wireframes, and gathering early feedback from my CTO and my PM, in order to realize features that were both user friendly and strategic for the app value proposition.
4/4 - Delivering the prototype and interviewing users, for understanding their approach towards Venato
In the last phase, I focused on delivering an high-fidelity prototype of Venato. After the prototype was ready, I started to interview some users with the rest of team, for understanding their approach towards Venato. The insights I gathered were amazing:
users were surprised by how quick they could create a listing, with little effort
they considered the portfolio feature an added value, and they were surpised to see how easy it was to keep track of their items
overall, they considered the app very friendly and easy to use
Coordinating with the rest of team has been a key part of the research, for gathering early feedback and making sure that my designs were aligned with their expectations.
FINAL THOUGHTS - USERS' REACTION TO VENATO
Want to see something more?
Let’s connect
Reach out on my social media accounts! I share insights about UX psychology and product
features 🧠
Riccardo Russiano