Case Study
Revamping User Experience
In the landscape of online commerce, alsoug.com faced a critical challenge. Through Design Thinking, we focused on refining user experience and strengthening connections between sellers and the platform.
Analyzing platforms like Souq Sudan and social media, we crafted a model tailored to Sudan’s digital commerce landscape.
Introduced a proficiency-based seller model, boosting visibility with proficiency. Implemented Networking for community and increased ad visibility. Redesigned the interface for a seamless user experience.
This Design Thinking approach is reshaping alsoug.com, addressing core challenges and positioning it as Sudan’s evolving online commerce platform.
Challenges
1- The Mindset of Sudanese user who will be using Alsoug.com
- As the final beneficiary of the app is Sudan-based users, that’s put a lot of challenges on the line since their use of online shopping is limited to social media applications.
- This leads us to one of the most popular user experience laws, Jakob’s Law of Internet User Experience which says: “Users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.”
- And in our case, our users know Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
2- Ads propagations and reach.
- Clearly, and based on our review of your platform we found out that the feeds system is structured as LIFO (Last in First out) including Ads of advertisers who are boosting as well. But the difference is their ads stick on the top of the feed.
- If we delve into the matter, we will find out that the ad could appear to someone who is never interested in your ad. This does not satisfy both parties:
1. To the advertisers who pay to increase the visibility of their ads. and meanwhile, it is appearing to someone who is not interested at all
2. To the different beneficiaries with different interests, it could be such spam/annoying behavior. - So the challenge is how to show the right ads to the right beneficiaries?
3- Searching Accurity
Due to the difference in dialects between peoples, some search results will be missed.
EG:
– Let’s say if someone is searching for a car. in their dialect, they call the car “عربية” which is a different dialect. on other hand, someone listed an ad for his car but he never mentioned the word “عربية” (the other different dialect word) in his Ad title. Consequently, the beneficiary will not get a result although there is something that matches what he is looking for.
– This problem has already been resolved by creating Keywords. But in our case, if we use Keywords the damage will be more than the benefit. let me tell you why?
If we force the advertisers to enter keywords while creating an Ad, we bet that you’ll notice the Ad creation conversion rate or the key performance indicator of successfully created ads will go down.
This happens because most of the segments which will be using the app is hard for them to understand what the keywords are.
- Parkinson’s Law: A task will inflate to take up all the available time. which makes the task difficult for the advertiser.
- Hick’s Law: increasing the number of choices will increase the decision time. Which describes the time it takes for a person to make a decision as a result of the possible choices Infront of the user.
So the challenge is? how will search results match what is being searched for even though there are no similar words totally in the title, description, or anywhere?
4- Market and Brokers.
- Since the Sudanese market is full of brokers, Alsoug.com will be such a bright opportunity for them.
- While we are conducting some researches, we found that this is how the online marketplaces became. It’s about brokers but are covered by words such as Dropshipping, Dropservices, Affiliate Marketing, and so on. This leads us to two questions?
1- is it worth restructuring the Alsoug.com application to fight brokers?
2- What if a certain feature has been provided which allows them to use Alsoug.com and both sides benefit from each other. That would be a challenge definitely?
5- Customer Retention.
- Putting a little more focus on the customers you already have is a necessary thing. This could be done by building features such as rewards systems, newsletters, so on.
- And actually, this would cost fewer than onboarding a new customer, based on data curated by Harvard Business Review.
onboarding a new customer is somewhere between 5x and 25x more expensive than retaining a customer you already have
Solutions
1- Searching Accurity.
In order to get a related result of what has been searched for, The mechanism should not depend on what is inside the ads (title, description…etc) in order to show the result, we will use be pr-defined words in the back-end. let me show you how:
- With the same concept of a sub-category, each category will have a manually added subcategory but are not visible for the user or the advertiser.
- Those subcategories are related words the user may use it to search for certain things. If the user types any of those subcategories words in the search field, the results came up with the ads in the category which contain the matched subcategory words.
- Let’s say there is a category called “Food”. The admin side created a subcategory of “Food” call it “Meals”, So when the user searches for “Meals” the result will come up with Ads in the “Food” category although he didn’t type it.
By this solution, the user will still be getting results even though the advertiser did not mention any word the user used to search. He will be getting accurate results, if not, then will be a related results. and it’s better than nothing.
The idea here is to reduce the “No Result Message” and with that Alsoug.com will be really “Soug” of anything.
2-Ads propagations and reach.
When we talk about Ad boosting. companies like Meta, Snapchat, Linkedin focus on machine learning to deliver the right ad to the right person. But let’s be realistic, this could be an unlikely solution.
Why machine learning is an unlikely solution?
Machine learning requires a ton of users data. which definitely could not be provided unless you’ve been collecting user data (Such as behaviour’s, interest…etc) since you launched. In this case, the only solution is the personalization model.
What is personalization?
when we say personalization we mean we should build a model of each user. this model consists of user interest overall. it could be built in several ways. one of the simplest and popular methods is to collect user interests within the registration process. Those interests will be provided as multiple choices. Each option will be linked with categories in the back-end.
Let’s jump into the Advertiser side.
When we come to the Ad creation process. The Advertiser will have the option to select the category to which his Ad is related. So by this way, we guaranteed that this Ad will only come up to the people which they are actually interested. In addition, gives promising results to the advertiser.
3-Customer Retention.
Staying at the top of your customers mind is really a challenge. simply, what prevents them from using Facebook or Instagram to search for what they are looking for?
Clearly, we are talking about in-app features. As we compare in the next table the difference between Alsoug.com and Facebook.
Networks (Audience):
Let’s strengthen the relations between the customers and advertisers. by modifying the advertiser page and building a Follow system. this could be such a motivation for the advertiser to build his page and increase his followers. So he could use it as his online store website ( Like his personal Facebook page) and share it proudly. This could be a trusted certificate to the customer about the advertiser besides reviews.
Rewards System:
– Facebook has a reward system for users who are engaging with posts. The more you interact, the more badges you get. But on the other hand, there is no actual value for the badge however it builds a kind of loyalty.
– In Alsoug the rewards system could depend on many scenarios which will reflect real values:
- Comments and interactions on ads.
- Number of ads created (Give a free boost if achieved a certain number of ads).
- Daily login.
- Gifts/discounts/features will be available if the advertiser reaches a certain number of followers.
- your ad makes certain numbers of views.
And many other options that will increase the customer loyalty.
Optimized Notification:
Notification is the easiest option to keep customers remembering you.
57% of users want to receive push notifications from social media platforms, followed by news apps (45.94%), e-commerce apps (25.29%), mobile games (19.05%), travel apps (10.08%), and blogging apps (9.24%).
– so what if we link it with certain actions like:
- Build an “activate notification” icon within the advertiser page, and if he/she posts an ad then I will get notified.
- Ads within my interest
The challenges in customers retentions are too many, these were summarized solutions that would make an effect in the aspect of comparing with competitors.
Designs and visuals
As we went through the challenges and solutions, now it’s time to convert talks into actions. We will take some points which we talked about previously, and we’ll show you how we make the solutions through user interfaces design.
1- Home Screen.
On the home screen, we did multiple decisions like:
2- Advertiser Page.
We did implement 3 of the customer retention solutions
3- Ad View Page.
Conclusion
As we conclude our exploration of potential enhancements for alsoug.com, it’s important to note that the solutions discussed are conceptual ideas carefully crafted to align with the unique dynamics of Sudan’s digital commerce landscape.
The proficiency-based seller model, Networking feature, and redesigned interface are strategic suggestions rooted in user-centric considerations. These ideas present a roadmap for alsoug.com to explore and potentially integrate into their platform, with the aim of addressing challenges and meeting the evolving expectations of users in Sudan’s digital commerce space.
This case study sets the stage for thoughtful consideration, testing, and adaptation based on real-world user feedback and the unique requirements of the alsoug.com platform. The journey ahead involves navigating these possibilities to shape the platform’s trajectory in the ever-changing landscape of online commerce.