charityBay.org
OVERVIEW
charityBay is a marketplace website dedicated to donating a part of its purchase price to any registered charity of your choice. The idea is to indicate the percentage of the sale proce that you would want to donate to charity and also select the charity when listing an item for sale. charityBay would be the intermediary that would send the designated portion of the sale price to the charity. The site is used by buyers, sellers and charities however, the owner, Haidar Al Falouji, needed help with the seller journey specifically, as he noticed that sellers were dropping off partway through the process and not completing the journey to a listing.
Design Process
Double Diamond
Research and Analysis
Synthesis
Ideation
Design
Agile Approach
Iterative Process
My Role
-
Team Lead within a team of 5
-
All aspects of design process
Tools
Miro
Google Docs
Google Slides
Google Forms
Figma
Zoom
Slack
The Challenge
Create a seamless seller journey,
Identify gaps in the seller process
Emphasis on social impact
Create a balanced homepage for all users
Trackable impact
New buyer market for sellers with emphasis on charitable giving
Value of charityBay certification of social impact
Scoping Summary
Business Goal
1- Sellers journey:
Identify and eliminate pain points to enable sellers to easily
complete the process from start to finish when listing items to
sell, with the end goal of increasing website traffic.
2- Direction:
Make it clear where the seller should go to start the process
and provide all the necessary information.
3- Balance/Language:
Send the message that charityBay is firstly a social impact
site that achieves its goals through the buying and selling of
items and products. Balance business needs, social needs,
credibility and website functionality.
4- Theme:
Raise awareness about social impact (story, values, charities,
language, statistics) and highlight the main differentiator: the
seller has the option to decide what percentage of the cost
goes to the charity, can select the charity and can track it -
people can see the financial journey.
Project Challenge
One of the main problems, when we started, was that the client wanted to get so many things researched and wanted so many solutions to different aspects of the site. It was a challenge to really get an understanding of what the priority issue was and focus on that.
Apart from my experience as Team Lead, I learned that it's important to try and see through the fog and confusion some clients might be feeling and help them to pinpoint the main problem they are facing. Part of the way of doing this is finding out what their end goal is and understanding how and why that goal wasn't being reached.
Problem Statement
Sellers are challenged by the listing process on the charityBay website as they want to experience a seamless journey when listing items on the site, resulting in increased website traffic and a greater sense of social impact.
Research
Research objectives:
Understand users motivations for donating
Understand how the user locates and chooses a charity
Usability testing to gauge likes & dislikes of using website
Find opportunities for improvement in the seller's journey
Determine if promotion or certification is valuable to business owners.
Find out users preferences when making donations
48
Survey respondents
9
Interview and usability candidates
(3 small business owners/students and 4 SME established business owners)
Research Findings
Young People are stepping up
An active younger generation emerging with 18-24 year olds more likely to
volunteer than their older counterparts
● 75% of this demographic has made a donation in the last 12 months
● and 35% do volunteer work.
They represent a generation of buyer and sellers who are more engaged with
social issues and may want to "unleash the power to good”.
Trust is key
Many Reports found that TRUST is paramount in the public perception of
charities. For 25-34 year olds
● 47% would donate more if they had more money
● 41% would donate more if they knew where their money was spent
So transparency and accountability is everything, and as a team, we need
keep showing that credibility and security people look for.
Donors are seeking
Donors are really looking for a more personalised, meaningful experience.
● Set and forget generosity on the decline
● Most people prefer to hear back from an individual person within the
organization as opposed to hearing from the non-profit as a brand.
"ANYTHING TO RAISE FUNDS FOR A GOOD CAUSE"
Transparency and trust
People want to know what happens to their donations and they want to see their donation going to the cause itself.
Stats
75% of respondents will donate online
31.3% were not interested in a site like charityBay
89% do not track and measure donations or items sold to charity but would like to
Research Insights
Business Owners
Credibility & Authenticity Matters
Hesitant to promote their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility)
Concerned about using the certification badge
Individual Sellers
Social Impact Comes First
Convenience
See social impact
Personal fulfillment
Common Findings
Transparency is Key
Security
Tracking
Credibility
Lack a compelling reason to utilise the site.
Users care about a clean and consistent interface
Personas
We developed two personas based on the two types of sellers: business owners and individual sellers
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Customer Journey Map
As the majority of interview candidates were more established business owners, we decided to build our customer journey map based on Andre, the first persona.The journey followed Andre as he reached the home page, started the listing process and what happened after he submitted his first listing.
We followed his thoughts and feelings at each stage including and taking into account his pain points and delight points.
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Challenges and Opportunities
Challenges
Language
Unbalanced
Security
Transparency
Opportunities
Balanced layout and language
Charity stories and/or statistics
Emphasise social impact
Balanced homepage for buyers and sellers.
How Might We...?
HMW emphasise the message of social impact on the site, creating a balanced homepage for all user types and improve the site language to clarify objective, intention and audience?
HMW help charityBay provide a sense of motivation, security and credibility to buyers and sellers through the use of tracking and measuring?
HMW create a seamless and more efficient listing process that emphasises personal fulfillment and encourages frequent visits/listings?
MVP
After conducting brainstorming sessions, we mapped out our ideas into a Minimal Viable Product chart to help us determine the high-value and viable elements, considering usability, reliability, and differentiation. These ideas would provide sellers with valuable solutions that were not unduly complicated to implement in the timeframe allotted and would meet users' needs.
Design Solutions for Wireframing
Home Page
● Push the message of social impact first
● Create a balanced home page for buyers and sellers
● Add sellers and donate to the navigation bar
● Bring Social Traders badge to the top and activate
● Move download app to the footer
● Create a top banner carousel
● Place social media widgets and blog articles at the top
● Place a tracker on the home page with total stats
● ‘Just Added’ and ‘Featured’ are repetitive
● Sell/Shop/Charities section to expand with information
● Add a tracker to emphasise social impact and site objective
Listing Pages
● Remove ‘suggested categories’ and introduce tagging system to the title and categorisation page
● Fix the layout and design of categorisation options
● Include a save a draft and an are you sure you want to exit prompt
● Reorder page: donation, image, title/description, price
● Set the donation slider to the lowest amount
● Include the 5% commission as part of the donation figures on the side
Donate/Sell and Charity Selection Pages
● Remove that Donate/Sell page
● Move search bar to the top and add a location filter
● Condense charity profile information and include in a drop down
● Improve layout
User Flow - Original and New
Original user flow
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New user flow
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Wireframes
What's Next?
Social Impact
Primary Recommendations:
Stories from sellers and charities
Celebrate businesses and social impact stories on social media
Secondary Recommendations:
Thank you video from charity
Newsletter highlights
Human Connection
Communication
Primary Recommendations:
Feedback page/section
Seller notifications when there is any activity on listings
Secondary Recommendations:
Send communications about other similar items
Development
Primary Recommendations:
Refine UI design
Secondary Recommendations:
Further usability testing
Enhanced Marketing - along with our research
Design
Primary Recommendations:
Post on social media platforms about listings
Secondary Recommendations:
Suggestion to allow users to pick top three issues they care about rather than one
Encourage relisting