Reducing seller’s order handling time
Studies have shown that buyers are more likely to buy from sellers with lower handling time, however, eBay provides minimal guidance nor encouragement to reduce it
Not only this, but the current seller interface also does not reflect correctly how sellers are meeting eBay’s criteria for handling orders on time. Current sellers believe that as long as they package the order and print the label from eBay, it counts as on time.
How might we encourage sellers to ship their orders as quickly as possible to ensure orders are delivered on time, benefitting both buyers and sellers?
Core Team
Product Designer (me)
Sr. Product Designer (mentor)
Product Manager
Timeline
9 weeks
May - Aug 2024
Scope
User Research
Concept Design & Testing
Interaction Design
Visual Design
I designed 3 concepts to tackle the issues of sellers not handling their orders on time through:
Breaking down the order handling status of each order highlighting urgency,
Educating sellers on the impact shipping has on them, and
Motivating small and new sellers to accomplish goals relating to fast handling time
Success Metrics
• 2.5% improvement in the volume of listings that have an estimated delivery date within 4 days
• Decrease in sellers’ specified handling time (from 3 days to 2, 2 days to 1, etc.)
• NPS/CSAT scores on how the new features helped or did not help them as a seller
Throughout this case study, “handling time” and variations of the word "ship" will be used interchangeably to mean that an order has been packed, label created and on the package, and in the hands of the carrier.
Business Opportunity
The problems of sellers being unaware of the importance of shipping as quickly as possible and the buyers’ unrealistic expectation of the delivery timeline generate a loss of $5.3 million from 80,000 order cancelations for estimated delayed delivery.
Moreover, there is an opportunity to help C2C sellers develop better habits for more successful selling, which can lead to an additional 23% GMV missing from B2C sellers.
Answering the 3 main questions…
Audit Takeaways
In addition, I took into consideration the current experience, from buyer to seller experience, onboarding, listing, profile, and performance experiences, careful not to repeat what has already been done and understand how this new experience can fit into the larger environment.
The 3 main opportunities worth exploring based on the experience audit include highlighting Top Rated Seller benefits, incorporating real-time status change, and making learning about handling time more accessible.
From the user research, interviews with UX researchers, and audit, I brainstormed with my mentor the Jobs To Be Done for the sellers & prioritized them with the product manager
Challenge 01
Gotta keep within our team's control in the Orders domain!
Although many of the reasons that a seller fails to ship on time are external factors such as convenience, lack of shipping supplies, weather, and carrier decisions, for the scope of this project I am not able to directly address these because of the nature of our work, as well as the domain our team controls.
Therefore, my explorations will only be within the Orders domain.
Explorations focused on seller pain points such as process confusion, low discoverability, and missing knowledge about shipping orders and buyer expectations
Concept #1
Quick Actions + Seller Level
Ability to easily locate orders that need immediate action from the seller and using Seller Level as motivation through highlighting the important metrics of how to reach Top Rated Seller to gain its benefits
Concept #2
Time Urgency And Next Steps
Quickly see the shipping status and understand the urgency in processing orders in different phases with different icons, content, and timers.
Provides hints of the next step in gray text, coupled with the main CTA relating to that action.
Concept #3
Motivation Through Buyer Sentiment
Allows deeper insights into their buyers’ emotional needs for the item by surfacing metrics that point to high interest and engagement from the buyers. This in turn motivates the seller to ship faster in order to meet their buyers’ needs, seeing the human on the other side.
Option A was my favorite - it was geared towards sellers, especially new or casual sellers, who may not be interested in eBay’s Top Rated Seller program. From my competitive analysis, I saw this opportunity which from the start gained interest from my PM and design team as something interesting.
Concept Testing with Sellers
Be careful about specific terms used and make sure to test them out with old and new sellers in the future
Would be more motivated to provide faster shipping through more visible benefits to the seller and performance improvement
Don’t be too granular in breaking down the steps or provide too many timers; this causes even more confusion and fluff that would be too distracting
Challenge 02
This time around, I decided to play with dynamic interactions, explore another area within the Orders page, and be bold enough to design a completely new page to meet the sellers’ expectations, discarding my self-imposed limitations
Concept A
✨ Dynamic Order Statuses
In this version, the quick action section at the top allows the seller to quickly view at a glance the orders that need their attention. These are the new orders, orders that are due today, and overdue orders. This update retains most of the main ideas explored previously, such as the use of timer (with less repetition), hint texts, and colors - which can be seen in the next section as well in the order cards.
Redesigned Order Cards
My mentor had taken the concept from above and redesigned the layout of the order cards so that the important shipping information are all on one side.
My contribution was to refine the UX copy and UI based on my original idea and feedback from sellers and design system team.
Concept B
✨ Seller Playground
Here, this concept invites the seller to check out how their business is impacted relating to order handling and Seller Level. By placing the Seller Level status and the entry point close by, a connection between the two can be instantly made.
The high interactivity within each of the sections, especially the “Did you know?” section, makes it the most convincing factor for both big and small sellers to shorten their handling time. When the seller can see the impact both positively and negatively as they type in a different number, it makes it easier to understand the cause and effect.
Concept C
✨ Seller Checklist
This one is perhaps the simplest solution: placing a checklist next to the order cards that helps both new and smaller sellers understand the rules of the game in a way that optimizes their store’s success. All of the items on the checklist relate to faster handling and shipping services. Since this is not useful for big sellers, it will only be available for those who fit the criteria.
My PM & engineering team were impressed 🎉
The engineers were especially excited about concepts A and C, pointing out their direct impact to the sellers, and the PM loved the playground concept with the actionable feedback and feasibility.
“I’m a new seller and this shows me what I need to do to succeed. I’m also a very big checklist person so this is definitely something that would get me fired up.”
- Anonymous engineer
The next steps will be to do another round of testing with sellers and align with PM and engineering team on the direction to go with.
Key Learnings
01 Don’t limit yourself to the current design
It is okay to go above and beyond on the concepts first because you’ll later use that and retrofit it to the current design.
02 Plan, plan, plan!
With the complexity of the features of Seller Hub, it is crucial to see the big picture and organize these ideas into actionable plans. During my time at eBay, I learned to be proactive, think ahead of what I would encounter, and have a plan to ensure everything goes smoothly.