Defining the future of the seller's messaging tool

Company

Mercado Libre↗

Seller Central Team ——— 2022

01 OVERVIEW

😖 PROBLEM

The messaging tool is not scalable for different business models (purchase and after-sale). Additionally, sellers are using third-party integrators to handle message volumes instead of relying on Mercado Libre’s native tool.

🎯 Goal

Establish the foundational elements of the messaging tool to enhance versatility across various business models, close the competitive gap, and increase seller engagement on Mercado Libre.

🎯 KPI

Scope definition (merging the two conversational sections or not), establish the initial structure, and determine the technical approach.

😎 Achievements — AGREEMENTs

Unified platform

Our research led us to merge two conversational sections into a unified platform, allowing sellers' to prioritize better and identify conversations. We started by developing the technical capability in one section by late 2023.

Securing direction

I developed a plan and led a prioritization session to align features with seller needs. Created low-fidelity wireframes to outline the initial flow, securing clear direction and stakeholder alignment.

MY ROLE

Solo Senior Product Designer

WHAT I DID

Analyzed research, competitors, and metrics.

Developed conceptual proposals and lo-fi wireframes.
Facilitated a prioritization features and planned the roadmap.
Presented to stakeholders and team.
Documented decisions.

TEAM

Product Manager (1) and myself.

STAKEHOLDERS

Managers (3 - Ux, Product and Engineer), Engineer leader (1) and Sr Managers (2).

02 UNDERSTAND

Exploratory survey

Gathered seller's feedback alongside Research and categorized pain points

27300 Distribution

832 Completed survey

Scalability

A lot of time is wasted managing messaging, making it difficult to organize and clearly track messages.

—— 'It would be useful to have a way to view all messages and respond to them later.'——

Findability

Difficulty tracking messages is a recurring pattern among the surveyed sellers.

—— 'There are times I need to spend more time on a message, but I can't mark it as unread or pending.'——

Categorize

Today, they can identify claim messages with a bit of help from the dashboard, but not in terms of overall priority for organizing or filtering them.

—— 'Once I reply to a message, it gets lost, and there's no way to find it again. If it is a claim, it is a problem' ——

Automatization (out of scope)

Sellers feel that a lot of time is lost responding to the same messages.

—— 'Mercado Libre does not provide them with an efficient way to answer questions.' ——

Current experience

Analyzing current conversation typologies to have an holistic vision

Now a days, the seller has conversations in 2 places in the platform for 2 different parts of the journey.

Pre-sale affect the main business KPI and the seller has limited time to answer.
Pos-sale can impact in the buyer's satisfaction.

Both are conversations, could be in the same place?

2 Sections

2 business model

Pres-sale

Post-sale

03 FOUNDATION

Scoping conversations to address unmet needs

Conversations

Has at least one round trip between

2 parties with opportunities.

Buyer - Seller

Seller - CS Team

Communications one-way

Communications
one-way

It has no round trip. Already has a centralize section.

News

Publicity

Alert

First approach selected to ensure the stakeholder's alignment

Agreements and next steps

Findability

Navigation

Why create a new inbox section?

By creating a new inbox section, we can improve message organization by focusing the seller in one task, simplify navigation, and boost overall efficiency.

Meanwhile, we stay competitive because a dedicated section is value by sellers.

Access

Quick filters & prioritize

Scalability

Categorize

Efficiency

Why merge conversational sections?

A merged section will simplify seller workflow and improve task management. Sellers don’t differentiate between pre-sale and post-sale tasks, as the same person manages both and Questions is the third section with the most traffic.

With a dedicated section, sellers will have tools to identify quickly the important/urgent messages.

👉 Next step: Validate and quantify with sellers.

Scalability

Navigation

How can we make the context scalable without it being a limitation?

This is part of the challenge of the solution. We thought of the sale and listing details as capabilities with information consumed from the same place, acting as a single dynamic component.

👉 Next step: Assess technical feasibility because this implies a redesign of the sales detail.

05 RESULTS &

TAKE AWAY

Results

These agreements laid the groundwork for building the first MVP after validate with users.

I was the consultant for the team who began by developing the capability in one section, validated it, and then progressed toward a unified section for conversations.

Takeaways

SIMPLE BOARD

To define something complex, I polished my conceptual proposals, kept everything clear and rational in one place, and maintained a clean board. Feedbacks 💛

KNOW YOUR STAKEHOLDERS

Initially, we agreed on a conceptual proposal. However, I created a few low-hi flows to help the more visual stakeholders better understand the direction.

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Let’s connect

👉 denugm@gmail.com

———

RESUME

MEDIUM

BEHANCE

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