VENDOR Offer Pricing
Support vendors(suppliers) pricing products to win buy box
CONTEXT
Our vendor business is the primary source of profit on our platform, accounting for over 50%. However, we have recently discovered that our purchase prices are not as competitive as they could be, which affects a significant portion of our products in the market.
Meanwhile, our vendors are struggling with providing competitive prices to win auctions without sacrificing too much profit.
Our project aims to bridge this gap and create a mutually beneficial solution.
Updated: Sep.2023. Please note that all UI and content have been modified for confidentiality reasons.
Sell
Buy
Contract
Product and Price
Maintain relationship
*Vendor sells goods or services for a profit.
*Vendor Manager facilitate and maintain relationships with vendors
Methods
Lean UX
Semi-structured Interview
Multi-stakeholder workshop
Information Architecture
Prototyping (low-high fi)
Wireframes
Usability Test
Toolkits
Figma, Axure
Lucichart
Condens, Google Analytics, Hotjar
Jira, Confluence
Duration
Mar.2023 - Present
Role
Design Lead
UX/UI design
PROCESS
What is the problem?
How can we address it?
Does it work?
How to improve?
RESEARCH QUESTION
How can we improve Vendor Business
Semistructured Interview
4 Vendors + 4 Vendor Manager
Goal: understand how they collaborate what are the painpoints in pricing.
USER RESEARCH
Key Findings
Pure manual process in price adjustment
Vendors struggle with adjusting prices as Excel files must be manually uploaded each time.
Vendor Managers rely on email to exchange manually calculated market prices with vendors for pricing negotiations.
Zero transparency of the status of the offered product
The Metro Platform holds auctions to select suppliers for products. However, vendors may miss out on opportunities if they are not informed about their chances of winning or how to improve them.
"...I have no idea which of my products have been sold in the market. I checked by searching the website to see if anyone was selling them..."
No reference for providing apporioate products
Small and medium-sized businesses often miss out on opportunities due to a lack of understanding of B2B market demands and product competitiveness.
"...I have 60K+ items, but only 2K are selling in Metro because I don't what product will be welcomed and purpolar in B2B business..."
DESIGN
How could we improve vendor pricing process?
Alignment + Team Brainstorm
Designer + Product Manager + FE/BE developer
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Demonstrate the user findings with the Persona and User Journey map.
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Identify Design opportunities
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Brainstorm without thinking about technical restrictions
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Design Ideas
A shared space for managing price
Vendors see prices and offers within one place and make range of price dynamically based on the demands.
Show offer winner/ competitiveness transparently
Show Buy-box confirmation and how to win Buy-box
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Suggestions for opportunity
Suggestions for well-liked products currently available in the market.
Provide the current market price and level of competition
Prototyping
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I check the overview in the dashboard
Check opportunity & recommendation
Adjust Price
Explore
TEST & ITERATIVE DESIGN
Does it work? & How to make it work better?
Ongoing Process
Lean Design
Test Result
Useful
Vendors see prices and offers within one place and make range of price dynamically based on the demands.
Clear
Vendors see prices and offers within one place and make range of price dynamically based on the demands.
Unclear view of scale of comparison
To improve the user experience, it is suggested to separate the buy-box from competitiveness. Additionally, adding tooltips for further explanation would be helpful.
Missing Guideline for Win Buy Box
Add an explanation of how we calculate to win the buy-box.
Take away
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Planning is crucial for a successful and efficient recruiting process, which may take longer than expected.
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Building and maintaining strong connections with users, and consistently seeking their honest feedback, can be highly advantageous.
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It's important to tailor communication strategies to different users, especially those with more experience in the industry, to help them embrace technological solutions.