For years the main focus has been to improve the listing flow for consumer-to-consumer sellers. While this is indeed an important part of the whole selling process, other aspects of the end-to-end experience such as funneling new sellers into eBay, and making the post transaction experience frictionless, were too often relayed as secondary priority. The UED team wanted to bring back the focus on a hollistic understanding on what sellers experience during the whole selling process, and wanted to develop innovative options on how to improve the user experience as well as creating business opportunities for eBay.

At the end of 2014, I got the mandate to create a consumer-to-consumer selling vision plan for 2015. I gathered existing research data to analyze and understand the complete process, from the moment a potential user starts to think of selling something on or outside of eBay, to the post selling transaction experience.

I created a customer journey map that helped the team gain clear insights on how sellers move through the selling process. It also helped us identify areas that were disjointed or painful, and where sellers were at risks of dropping off.

Two designers joined the project during the ideation phase to help generate as much ideas as possible. The three of us had regular short brainstorming sessions to come up with innovative ideas that could disrupt the existing marketplace and unearth solutions that would minimize customer’s friction and improve overall satisfaction. Throughout the process we also focused on millennials’ needs since eBay needs to attract and funnel in this user segment. Out of all the ideas generated, we selected the most promising ones and presented them to the larger audience and executives. Ultimately, some ideas were added to the roadmap and influenced the user experience of the lately released app.