The don’ts of Nepal’s Craigslist — HamroBazar app : A UI/UX case study
Right off the bat, I’m not affiliated with Hamrobazar in any capacity, and the views for this case study are strictly my own. Since I don’t have full access to all the user data that influenced their current design, this case study is not fully comprehensive. This case study was done to enhance my learning experience and challenge myself to serve a specific purpose.
WHAT IS Hamrobazar ?
Founded in 2005, Hamrobazar can be considered to be the Nepali version of Craigslist. It is a free to use online classified platform which enables individuals as well as companies to list wide variety of new or used product online to act as a vehicle as well as communication channel for connecting buyers and sellers.
APP ANALYSIS
Since I had already used the app and had some idea about it, I decided to do an in-depth analysis of the app first. I wanted to understand the functionalities, overall architecture, and navigation.
Through the analysis, I was able to identify some clear usability issues and pain points. I listed all of them to validate them after my User Research.
UNDERSTANDING THE USERS THROUGH USER INTERVIEWS
Digital Users Demographic
HamroBazar’s monthly unique visitors on all the digital platforms are around 1 million, with 78% males and females around 22%, and 73% of the users’ age ranged from 22–49 years old.
Conducting User Interview
I started my user research by conducting user interviews with 7 users, which vary from frequent active users to infrequent users of any e-commerce app to understand what motivates or demotivates them from using online e-commerce portals and transaction habits.
I conducted most interviews via google forms while some I ran in person.
The male interviewees’ age ranged from 23 to 54 years old, while both females ranged from 24 to 46 years old, which I felt was a fair representative sample of Hamrobazar’s current user base.
Some key insights from the interview-
- Almost all the participants browsed through the e-commerce app at least once a day, mostly at night, while clearing up all the notifications.
- Most of the participants said that notifications grab their attention, and eventually, they end up opening the app while some even felt that endless notifications could get annoying.
- The features they use most often are whish listing and sharing the advertisements.
THE NEXT STEP WAS TO UNDERSTAND THE EXISTING USERS
Going Through The Reviews
I started looking for reviews on the Play Store. There weren’t many downloads of the app (500K+), so I only found a few relevant reviews to know the specific pain points that particularly resulted in adverse app onboarding and inefficient user retention. Apart from the reviews ranting about the web version being better than the app, and occasional slowness in performance, the ratings pointed out the interface being “outdated”, “complicated” and “hard to use”.
Usability Testing
Before the user interview, I asked the same 7 participants to test the Hamrobazar app. I wanted to see how they will interact with the app’s features as compared to their engagement experience with other similar e-commerce app.
Some of the tasks that I gave them during the testing were-
- Open the app and create an account to start with.
- Browse through ad listings based on category
- Search specific product that they hypothetically wanted to get hold on
- Create a dummy ad listing along with uploading photos and proper product description
- Engage with real time advertisements and contacting seller
DEFINING THE PROBLEM
After identifying and analyzing pain points through user research, I defined the following pain point that most users had trouble with.
Self identified UI/UX issues -
- Home Screen
2. Post New Ad
3. View Ad
4. View Ad categories listing
Pain Points common to most of the users-
Pain Point 1- Hectic user onboarding
Pain Point 2- Confusing and cluttered UI
Pain Point 3- Difficulty in one hand usage
Pain Point 4- Unfamiliar interface
Pain Point 5- Difficulty in posting of ads
Needs of the users-
Need 1- Customization
Participants expressed that they wanted to have more customization options for font size, theme, notifications, categories. They want the content shown to be prioritized based on their preference.
Need 2- More diverse features
The users wanted more features other than saving, such as chatting and reporting.
Competitive Analysis
I did the Competitive Analysis by listing all the essential features in a structured tabular format to identify the competitors and mapping out their strengths and weaknesses. For this, I chose the ones with maximum downloads and features.
Reflection and lesson learned
At first, I was a tad nervous as I knew this would be a lot of work. But, despite my fear and nervousness, I knew this was the perfect opportunity to hone my design skills.
Looking back on the whole process, this case study reminded me that users are always the center of every design decision and the impact of the smallest of a thing, such as changing an element’s position has great value to the overall experience the design provides. And, the best part is — it doesn’t end. The learning process is continuous.
Thank you for reading!
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