Not On The High Street is a curated marketplace. Increasing the seller base was one of the objectives of the team I worked with. To become a seller on the platform one needs to go through a vetting process. 

We knew that currently it took a considerable amount of time— on average 47 days— to start selling on the platform. 

Working with the New Partner Acquisition team (NUPA), who handled the seller applications and on-boarding, we wanted to look at reducing the time taken to bring sellers to our platform. This initiative had two main user groups - seller applicants and NUPA team members.

My role

I was involved in the project from discovery, concept formation to the execution phase. This included-

• Running activities alongside a UX researcher during discover phase

• Concept creations

• Designing journeys and UI

• Validating concepts with usability testing (working with a UX researcher)

• Stakeholder management

• Working with developers and ensure the product gets built as designed

Working closely with a UX researcher, we did a bunch of activities to gain a deeper understanding of the space. 

Speaking with sellers
Spoke to newly accepted sellers to learn about their application and the on-boarding experience  

Speaking with the NUPA team
Spoke to members of the team across the team hierarchy to understand roles, responsibilities, pain points and needs

Job shadowing

Observed curators to gain a deeper understanding of how the criteria changes depending on the context 

Process Mapping

Created a map of the selection process to highlight how roles, criteria and tools work in conjunction with each other

About the NUPA team

• Seller selection process is fully manual

• Applications are reviewed multiple times by multiple people

• Selection criteria is highly subjective

• The application form didn't collect all of the necessary information for the assessment

• Lots of back and forth between the NUPA team and applicants for additional information 

• Partners’ brand matters more than their individual products 

• 18 days is the average time taken to make a decision on an application

About sellers

• It was a big deal for sellers to apply and get accepted
  
  
  

“It’s just me in my business. It was a big deal and huge milestone for me to apply! I was really excited”

• Sellers expect us to be vigorous in our approach. And respect or acknowledge what this meant for their business

• Sellers do considerable amount of research their own research before applying (e.g., conversations on Facebook groups)

• Partners mentioned that they didn’t know about the membership fee and commission when they applied, and were surprised later on

• Collect relevant information on application

• Improve communication around the selection process and terms 

• Improve internal process on sharing & reviewing applications

• Clear criteria for decision making

• Make cold leads application easier

• Empower team decision making & increase confidence in the system

Testing
Once we had the form UI ready, we decided to do one more round of  testing.

This time the main focus of the test was to interactions and the revised questions

Findings

• There were two key findings from this round of testing-

• No issues with the interactivity of the form

• The need for more context around some question was highlighted

Rollout
We decided to defer providing more context to the next iteration and release the new form as it was tested.

Impact

40%
uplift in decisions in one review

25% 

reduction in time taken to reach a decision