Africa's E-Commerce Platform
ABOUT
A multi-vendor digital marketplace for Africa. AKA the Amazon of Africa
SUK is a software-first platform that enables businesses in various industries to prosper and scale across Africa's continent. The mission behind this platform is to fuel Africa's economy through e-commerce by giving consumers and merchants easier access to find and sell goods and services.
01
APP VIABILITY
THE PROBLEM, THE SOLUTION, THE MARKET
THE PROBLEM
Merchant Pain Points
Merchants today have little means to online exposure. They are dependent on Facebook Telegram and What's App to give them the online presence to sell and even then they don't have an inventory management system or a CRM.
Consumer Pain Points
Consumers are not getting access to direct merchant products as online channels are crowded with scammers and fake products. No reliable source of marketplace.
02
APP VIABILITY
THE PROBLEM, THE SOLUTION, THE MARKET
Merchant Solutions
An online store to manage customers, leads, orders, and inventory. Ability to fully have an online presence without the purchase of a website. Direct to consumer medium to sell products and services
Consumer Solutions.
Accessibility to thousands of products. Convenience of online shopping. SUK also opens up the market to second hand goods so consumers can sell their own products to consumers.
THE
SOLUTION
APP VIABILITY
THE PROBLEM, THE SOLUTION, THE MARKET
6 million people online daily within Ethiopia buying and selling goods using What's App, Telegram and Facebook. 90% of users are connected using cheap android devices on 3G - 4G plans.
03
THE MARKET
User Specific Features
MERCHANT - ANALYTICS
Manage your inventory, sale orders and customers directly within your store. Track these analytics on a daily, weekly or monthly spread.
CONSUMER - ACCESSIBILITY
Ability to browse through inventory by category or simply search the marketplace. Ability to sell in the marketplace as a second hand good.
WTF are user flows?
A user flow is a series of steps a user takes to achieve a meaningful goal
Used to communicate the intended flow of a user through various pages and actions in an app or website.
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Land on marketplace page. Products displayed based on user's location
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User prompted to sign In/ Sign Up
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Able to Browse products without signing In/ Up
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Cannot save, message, post products without creating account
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Sign In/ Sign Up
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Ability to have full user experience - messaging sellers, posting listings, order management
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Manage inventory, customers
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Full merchant / consumer experience
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Invite friends
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Share products with others outside the platform
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Recommended products based on historical views
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Analytics for merchant to manage their online store
MosCoW Prioritization
Rank items in order of priority. Important technique to use in Agile, which places the most value on features that cary the highest business or user value. These are features that you define to be more valuable and have the highest priority in being developed.
Must Have
Should Have
Could Have
Won't Have
User account registration
Merchant account registration
Direct messaging
Inventory management system
CRM
Marketplace
Search/filter products
Analtyics
Email / Social Login
Profile picture for all users
Upload media in chats
Filter criterias to provider a narrow search result
Different currencies for different countries
Negotiable feature
Inventory analytics
Push notifications
User verification via email
Device verification via phone number
In app payment
payment gateway
Shipping method
Geolocation capability
Main categories of product / service
High volume categories
Design Guide
Color palette, typography rules, icons, buttons, etc
USABILITY TESTING
Interviewing users to validate the UI/UX
User Interview
After conducting my usability testing, I interviewed 5 people who had the same demographic and psychographic to validate more about the problem and needed features. I wanted to confirm whether my hypothesis was validated or not through this user interview. I also asked what motivated them to use this application and what they'd use it for.
What problem are you having when it comes to selling online?
What features do you "think" you need to sell your products/services?
Do you use any online platforms to sell your products/services?
How many times a day do you go online?
Key Findings - Merchants
Annoying customers that appear to be scammers inquiring about merchant products — All merchant participants thought the same — if there was a reliable platform to sell then a majority of their problems would be solved.
Merchants needed a full fledged online store to manage inventory, customers and communication. Today they're limited to Facebook Marketplace, What's App and Telegram.
Key Findings - Online Shoppers
Most online shoppers cant trust what merchants list as they find many are scammers. Almost all online shoppers felt that they needed to find the items they're looking for through a search or filter feature, in addition, they wanted to confirm that their purchase was protected.
Online shoppers look to Telegram, Facebook Marketplace to search for used products. They currently spend hours scrolling through listed items only to find that what they're looking for is not there.
Delivering Strong Foundation
The Tech Stack
