VerticalScope Case Study

Context

Who are VerticalScope’s customers?

VerticalScope services online communities like RedFlagDeals, WatchUSeek, AVSforums, and more totalling over 100M monthly active users.

How does VerticalScope make money?

VerticalScope sells ad space within their online communities.

How does VerticalScope measure success?

VerticalScope uses a combination of customer satisfaction and other unique metrics specific to individual features.

So where do I come in?

I was the sole designer on the marketplace team, working closely with two Product Managers, four Developers, and one Director of Product.

Problem

What was wrong?

VerticalScope does not facilitate the transaction, so there was no indication of whether an item had been sold yet resulting in us not knowing how much money was being transacted through a community’s marketplace.

Who are VerticalScope's Customers?

VerticalScope services online communities like RedFlagDeals, WatchUSeek, AVSforums, and more totalling over 100M monthly active users.

Why was this important to work on?

Buyers/Sellers would benefit from having a method to mark their item as sold, removing any false advertising in the marketplace.

The community would benefit by no longer seeing listings for items that they can’t buy.

VerticalScope would benefit by introducing an action that the seller could take that would suggest a transaction occurred, providing insight into the real dollar amount of items that are sold through our marketplace.

Research

What kind of research was done?

The majority of research for this feature was done through conducting user interviews with customers who would utilize the feature.

An analysis was also done on popular online marketplaces such as eBay, Facebook, and Kijiji.

What was the strategy?

I like to ask broad questions to gather context about the user, analyze their current workflow, then potentially find opportunities to any pain points.

Who conducted the research?

Both the Product Managers and Designers work together to conduct research such as user interviews, prototype testing, and results digestion.

Solution

User Flow & Wireframe Review

I work closely with my PM defining design objectives, gathering requirements, and creating use cases. User flows and wireframes of the solution are reviewed with product, design, and development to garner feedback.

Prototype Testing & HiFi Designs

This feature was prototype tested with a few select community members The results of those tests are brought back to the team for review. Final designs are then handed off to engineering.

83%

Average customer satisfaction rating from interviewed users.

92%

Users who wrote a review after marking their item as sold.

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