I worked on a team with two other UX designers for three weeks to improve Surplus Record: a used industrial equipment resale website. We used Sketch and InVision for rapid prototyping, and involved users every step of the way. We used various research techniques, including a heuristic analysis, competitive analysis, user interviews, and concept and usability testing.
To see our final prototype, click here, or if you'd like to see the annotated wireframes, click here.
Surplus Record is a used industrial machinery resale company that’s been around in one form or another since 1924. They don’t actually sell equipment themselves; they simply connect buyers and sellers - kind of like eBay or Craigslist. Unlike eBay or Craigslist, they hadn’t updated their site since the 90’s. They came to us not knowing exactly what they wanted, but understanding it was time for a change. Our job was to analyze their site and usher it into the modern world wide web.
Here’s where we started:
We first evaluated the site using Nielsen’s usability heuristics to fully understand our starting point and find basic areas for improvement.
After the heuristic analysis, we did a competitive analysis to orient ourselves in the surrounding competitive space and see what kinds of features would be expected by users.
At this point, we knew there were a lot of things we could fix, but weren’t sure which things we should fix. To figure that out we needed to know what was most important to users. We interviewed a variety of people over the phone: some current Surplus Record users, some that were new to the platform, and a few domain experts. Here’s what we found:
The users separated into two different categories:
1. “It’s easy to use because the system is familiar”
2. “I think I can just sense if the website is professional. If my first impression isn't good then why would I go back?”
Surplus Record’s users at the time primarily fell into the first camp, so any major updates risked making the majority unhappy. On the other hand, changes were necessary to appeal to new users, especially as established users grew older and started to retire. Our challenge was to attract new users without alienating the site’s existing user base.
In addition to our overall challenge, we came away with four main insights that informed our designs:
New users do not recognize Surplus Record as a trusted platform for finding equipment listings
New Users expect a search tool that is flexible enough to conform to their search parameters while displaying consistently formatted results
Most buyers look for specific pieces of information: pictures, brand, location, or price.
Buyers want to work with trustworthy sellers and tend to look for familiar names.
Once we had our problem identified, we sat down to ideate solutions using paper sketches. Normally we would follow up the ideation with paper prototypes, but this time we used Sketch.
We used software instead of paper because it would be easier for our users to envision as a real website. A significant portion of the users were not tech savvy, so we thought they wouldn’t recognize typical web page features, especially if hand drawn on a piece of paper.
We showed users the prototypes on a computer and asked for feedback as they saw each screen. In addition to seeing which features were best, we uncovered an additional insight that we incorporated into our final design:
Users appreciate a compact experience. They want easily scannable and well organized information.
Here’s how our final design met users’ needs:
Insight #1: New users do not recognize Surplus Record as a trusted platform for finding equipment listings
Our Solution: We established trust right away on the home page using imagery and copy that tell the story of an established, trustworthy company. The “newly added” section on the bottom of the page continues to inspire trust by demonstrating that the site is updated regularly.
Insight #2: New users expect a tool that is flexible enough to conform to their search parameters while displaying consistently formatted results.
Our Solution: The addition of categories below the main home page banner provides flexibility so users aren’t confined to searching by keyword.
Insight #3: Most buyers look for specific pieces of information: pictures, brand, location, or price.
Our Solution: The most useful pieces of information for the search results were displayed in sortable columns. Tools were included at the top of the page to help users sort or filter the information and find what they were looking for.
Insight #5: Users appreciate a compact experience. They want easily scannable and well organized information.
Our Solution: Each search result was collapsed by default to only display crucial information. The compact display and column layout helped users scan the page and find an appropriate machine as quickly as possible.
Insight #4: Buyers want to work with trustworthy sellers and tend to look for familiar names.
Our Solution: Expanding the search results would show more information, including the seller’s name and a newly added seller rating. The rating would allow buyers to quickly see if the seller was trustworthy, even if they hadn’t worked together before.
Listing Page Solution: On the listings page we tested several ways to organize and display the information, but ultimately included seller information and high-level specs at the top. This provided the most logical transition from the search results and reiterated the most important information at a glance. More detailed information was available further down the page, but the format was largely left up to the seller.
After creating our final prototype we usability tested and made a few tweaks, but overall the experience stayed the same. Click here to view the full InVision prototype, or explore this Google drive folder to see the annotated wireframes.
Working with Surplus Record was interesting because they were an established company with a long-standing user base. Trying to please both new and old users created tight constraints that forced us to be creative. It was also fun to work with very dense pages where prioritization and organization were of the utmost importance - each page was like a puzzle.
If you’d like to see how I work with startups, check out my work with Recordly: a fledgling company that needed help with the strategy and design of their mobile app.
