Project Overview

The Research

Understanding the brand - Craigslist (CL)

Craig Newmark began the service in 1995 as an email distribution list to friends, featuring local events in the San Francisco Bay Area. It became a web-based service in 1996 and expanded into other classified categories. The site now covers 70 countries.

Site Characteristics

Craigslist has five key features -

• Privacy Policy - CL chooses to refrain from making profits on account of its users. They prevent unauthorized access to or misuse of data, do not run ads, other than the classifieds posted by the users. the site does not share data with third parties for marketing purposes. They do not employ tracking devices for marketing purposes and many more.

• Safety against Frauds - CL extensively highlights Protection against frauds and scams, multiple times on the site. But unlike many other online marketplaces, they do not employ staff to check fraudulent/ prohibited listings. They leave it on the users to look out for themselves.

• Flagging / Report User - Craigslist has a user flagging system to quickly identify illegal and inappropriate postings. Users may flag postings they believe to be in violation of Craigslist guidelines.

• Two-way Email Relay - To protect the identity of sellers, CL has implemented a 2-way email relay to help stop spam and scams.

• No Log-in feature - A user can use CL without ever logging in. This feature is considered the USP of the brand.
  A seller has to register their email id with craigslist for if any inquiry is received, it can be forwarded to the seller’s email.

Site Heuristics Evaluation

I decided to dive deeper and conduct a site Heuristics based on the NN group 10 Usability pillars to find user’s pain points and oppertunities

Conclusions From Site Heuristics

- Inconsistent page design and user interaction elements like buttons
- Error messages are color only
- Multiple captchas
- Although search is the prominent feature it isn’t highlighted very well.

Competitive Analysis

To be up to date also comes with understanding the trends and features that the competition offers. hence I went forward with understanding who is the competition for CL. My analysis narrowed to Facebook marketplace, Mercari and Offer up.

Conclusions From competitive analysis

- All online selling sites offer seller ratings except CL.
- All have in-app money transfer except CL
- photos are mandatory in app apps except CL
- All sites have an inbuilt chat feature except CL
- listings can be sponsored
- robust listing requirement

Understanding User Needs

To narrow down the scope of assignment, I decided to focus my attention on the buyer and the buying process (i.e. searching a listing, contacting the seller, negotiating, pick up, payment and reviews). Understanding user need and motivations made identifying pain points and possible problems more evident.

GOALS
-Buy used furniture and home decor at a good price.
-Personal and financial safety.
-Sell upcycle products for maximum profit.
-products delivered at my door.

“I like when I know who the seller is. I don’t want to land up in some shady place with a stranger.”

User Journey Mapping

Conclusions From User journey

- Because of complete anonymity the users lack trust when in the transaction.
-Most sellers don’t give out their phone number
-Delayed in reply from other users (email reply).
-Signed in or not, the user has no way to keep a log of conversations with multiple sellers. have to switch between searching emails and messages.
-users want to exchange goods in daylight. They want to avoid any threatening situation.
-As people also resell used goods, with no returns or backtracking sellers. They want to make sure the goods are in the same condition as listed on site.

Key Issues

How Might We

From 3 key challenges we asked the ‘How Might We ‘ Questions to identify possible opportunities for creative solutions.

Ideation

The next step was to apply valid/ possible solutions and pan out a new task flow.

Final Designs

Buyer’s Task flow for members (registered)

Check out the interactive Prototype for Craigslist (for registered members)

Task flow for non- members (Do not have access to application chat feature.)

Check out the interactive prototype - Craigslist for Non Members. They enter their phone number and all messages are sent to the phone as a back up.

Takeaway

What intrigued me to study Craigslist.com was, as a user, I have seen myself shifting away from the site and moving to the competition. I could point out what was wrong but for my satisfaction, I decided to dive deeper and understand different aspects of the website.

Understanding task flow, user journey/ actions/ and pain points is a key to the new design. this is something that I will keep doing in the future as well.

Also, I feel I have a better grasp of the FIGMA software now, Creating the re-usable components, variables, setting grids fonts, and sizing helped me make my final design faster.