thumbnail dawanda
Dawanda (acq. Etsy)

Role
Product Designer

Team
iOS + Android devs, QA, Designer, PM

Project duration
2016

About
DaWanda [acquired by Etsy] was a marketplace for handmade goods. Designers, crafters and DIY enthusiast were able to open a shop and sell what they’ve created. Customers could buy handmade and customisable products. Personalized gifts were one of the main sold products.


My role
I joined the new mobile team, which mission was to build a native iOS and Android App for Dawanda’s marketplace .
Responsibilities
Full design process for iOS and Android devices
Software
Principle, Sketch, Zeplin, Jira, Slack


What problems did we discover?

 
user journey workshop

We kicked off our discovery phase by looking at our existing data, conducting user interviews and doing a journey-mapping workshop with the team.

The insights helped us define the problem space: Users were not engaged with the app content because it was very generic, they didn’t find what they were looking for because discovery and search wasn’t intuitiv and misunderstood our USPs.

Dawanda wasn’t just a regular marketplace like Amazon, but instead was hosting creators and entrepreneurs to sell unique, handmade and customisable products.

user testing
So one of the improvements we rolled out during the last quarter I’ve spent with Dawanda was a new onboarding flow and homescreen experience to tackle the above problems.
Our success metrics were increased engagement (time spent), retention and conversion rates.


Exploration and decision making for our MVP

One of the early UX decisions was to replace the “DIY” tab with a permanent “search/browse” tab. We wanted it to be accesible from every place in the app so users could easily jump to a new discovery journey. Our data indicated that engagement with our “DIY” section was lower than expected, despite the great content. We decided to move “DIY” to a section in our new homescreen. While we were restructuring the information architecture, we also redesigned the icons and made them more accessible and clear.

old vs. new tabbar
For our new onboarding and homescreen IA we went through a design sprint from low to high fidelity mockups and prototypes in multiple workshops involving the whole cross functional team.
me on a whiteboard sketching
We decided to introduce a new 3-step onboarding flow communicating our value propositions and create a homescreen with different section categories (e.g. “What’s new” | “Inspiration” | “DIY” | “Trending products”) to engage different buyer intentions. 
whiteboard photo with stickies on onboarding and homescreen content
For our Onboarding content we collaborated with our brand and marketing team to formulate our USPs. The sheet below shows our approach to answer specific questions about Dawanda and speak to the emotions of our users.

screenshot from sheets about onboarding content


Finalizing designs & launch


After multiple iterations and testing with our devs we finalized both the new onboarding and homescreen experience.
onboarding flow gif
We introduced clearer tabbar icons, an improved onboarding to communicate our USPs and a personalised, more engaging homescreen experience.
old vs. new homescreen
collage of old vs. new designs
Some interactions
Discovery through different entry points on our new homescreen
homescreen interaction gif
Interaction from product list to product detail page + adding to basket
pdp and add to cart interaction gif
Browsing and adding product to your pinboard
adding to pinboard interaction gif
We launched our iteration after 3 months of development and received tons of positive feedback from our customers and our internal stakeholders. 🎉 


Outcomes & results and one more thing...


We observed usage data and saw a positive uptrend in our engagement metrics.
On both operating systems (Android/iOS), we compared users who went through onboarding vs. no onboarding.  
google analytics kpi comparison before and after
Users who went through onboarding spent more time browsing through the app, discovered more and almost doubled the amount of products they looked into. Our PDP-Checkout conversion rate increase by about 20%!

We measured the number of CS calls with complaints related to our app, which also went down.

But somehow our AppStore ratings were not so great. 


Giving our happy users a voice 


Our AppStore rating was at an average of 2.6 stars by the time we released our new app and stayed like this for a couple of weeks.

We knew that App users were happy about the new design of the App because they reached out to us directly on other channels. So why wouldn’t that be reflected in our AppStore rating?
trello story screenshot for in-app review prompt
Luckily Apple released their new in-app review prompt feature by the time we launched our App update and I suggested to the team to implement it asap. 

We set our success metric to move from 2.6 stars to 3.5 stars in a two months frame. (Trello ticket)

The prompt would appear after the first purchase or after the third product has been favourited.
in-app review prompt example
In-app review prompt example
We achieved more than we expected: In just one month our AppStore rating increased to 4.8 stars with over 16k ratings. Users shared (mostly in German) how happy they were about the new app and the design. Our CEO gave kudos to the whole team on Slack and everyone was happy. I added and translated some examples below :)
app store page screenshot and user review examples
Designed nice and clear. I find the design very pleasent and nice. I’m quick in finding what I’m looking for using the search bar and also easily discover different categories.”

Perfect. App works without any issues. Clear, good search, lovely designed. Full score!”

Great App. The app works as expected with great design and function for buyers”
Very nice App! The App is clearly structured and nicely designed. Great fun! “

Great app, nice products! The app is designed very clearly and offers a lot of unique things. I always find something, even small things.” 



You reached the end of this case study. I hope you enjoyed it as much as me writing it. If anything was unclear or you have questions I would appreciate your feedback!

Thank you!

Mark
© 2024 Yusuf Algan