Indonesia is among the countries where its general population skipped desktop computers upon the digital evolution, and jumped straight into smart mobile phones. It challenges tech startups due to the different behavior and ability of this user segment.
For example, from User Research we discovered that among the biggest friction for buyers to close a transaction in OLX was in comparing products from different sellers, which is easy to do on desktop computers due to the ability to open multiple tabs, but it’s inherently difficult to do on a native mobile app due to limited screen estate.
While extreme users tend to have their own hacky ways to compare products, or simply switched to using a desktop, for the new users it’s a rather painful experience of going back and forth through different products or having to jot down notes on paper.
Our idea for a solution comes from another user research insight that even though most products in OLX are one of a kind (single-item inventory), buyers often manually take notes of interesting products they might want to buy later. It’s among the most surprising findings as in our initial hypothesis believed that since OLX is not an online shop with replenished stocks, users don’t need a product-saving feature.
Thinking to accommodate both the need to save a product listing, and compare several products to make decision, we’re introducing the ability to save favorites, and develop a page to do side-by-side comparisons of similar products.
We ended up including “Favorit” (Favorites, en.) as one of the menu items on the bottom menu bar, and reorganize the less important functions into sidebar or Settings. After launch, from analytics we discovered that Favorites has becoming one of the most used features in the All-New OLX version, and contribute a significant return traffic to products bookmarked. (byms)
