Autoscout24 Post MVP Features
Edenspiekermann Internship Project | Berlin, Germany
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MY ROLE
Product designer
Client: Autoscout24 |
TIMELINE
Client project duration
6 months |
TEAMMATES
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DESIGN TEAM & OVERVIEW
During my 4-month design internship at Edenspiekermann, a global design agency, I got to work with a variety of clients and projects. My main client project was with Autoscout24, where I took on the design of post MVP features for the Autoscout24 Smyle product, where my main role was visual design and product strategy as a part of the Core Stream. In addition to designers on Finance, Post-Transaction, Dealer and Branding streams, I was one of three product designers on the core stream.
Introducing AutoScout24
AutoScout24 is the largest pan-European online car market with over 30 million monthly users and more than 43,000 dealer partners. With a market presence in 18 countries, Autoscout offers customers, car dealers, and partners in the automotive, finance and insurance industries a comprehensive platform for trading cars online. With more and more consumers turning to the Internet to make purchases of all kinds, AutoScout24 was able to adopt an e-commerce business model with selling cars.
Edenspiekermann teamed up with AutoScout24’s product and engineering teams to create the most convenient and trustworthy process to purchase a used car online. This involved understanding the way car dealerships operate and providing them with tools they could integrate into their daily workflows, all with the goal of best solving the used car buyers’ needs.
Edenspiekermann teamed up with AutoScout24’s product and engineering teams to create the most convenient and trustworthy process to purchase a used car online. This involved understanding the way car dealerships operate and providing them with tools they could integrate into their daily workflows, all with the goal of best solving the used car buyers’ needs.
AutoScout Smyle: Rethinking Car Sales
INITIAL RESEARCH
After undertaking wide-ranging qualitative user and competitor research, we realized that the online used car marketplace has two different requirements: making it easier for dealers to sell their cars, while ensuring customers will feel confident and supported during and after the purchasing process. Therefore, Smyle needed to offer expertise, guidance and support to every customer by streamlining the purchasing process and providing clarity at every step of the journey. Providing security, support, and peace-of-mind for a big purchase, was more important than ever.
Additionally, AutoScout24 as a platform was in a great position to address unique consumer and dealer needs due to strong brand with high trust, relevant traffic, and concrete purchase intent.
Additionally, AutoScout24 as a platform was in a great position to address unique consumer and dealer needs due to strong brand with high trust, relevant traffic, and concrete purchase intent.
SMYLE MVP GOALS
Make buying used cars as simple and convenient as online shopping can be.
Together, Edenspiekermann worked with AutoScout24 to reinvent the way users can buy a used car online, developing a two-in-one service called AutoScout24 Smyle. In less than six months, the team mapped the experiences for both dealers and customers, tested key hypotheses and delivered an end-to-end product that was iterated with users via pre-launch prototypes. The team conceptualized, named, and developed the brand identity of Autoscout24 Smyle, helping them communicate it as a distinguished product within their core portfolio while leveraging their strong branding.
- AutoScout24, the leading European digital car marketplace, where users can trade, sell, and buy cars (with in-person aspects)
- AutoScout24 Smyle (part of AutoScout24), offers the opportunity to buy used cars entirely online
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Value to Consumers
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Value to Dealers
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SMYLE MVP LAUNCH
Smyle launched live in August 2021, with Edenspiekermann, and is continuously proving that buying a car can be as easy as shopping online.
POST-MVP
Post-launch, the team moved into a 50/50 model of improvements/backlog and new feature tasks. For new features, PMs and leads would pulling from the official product backlog, while defining the scope of new feature explorations through the business case, user needs, tech constraints, and work-stream goals. This case study will dive into new feature tasks as a part of the post-MVP stage of the product.
Core MVP Features: Unfinished Orders
Since car buying can be a large and intimidating process, it was found through qualitative and quantitative research that users would often leave their car order unfinished and return to it later in multiple days and weeks. The design challenge was to find a way to hook users back into continuing their car purchase process on AutoScout, in a simple and seamless way. This design challenge required us to consider all entry points into smyle, from the Autoscout24 website, listings page, my account page, as well as externally through emails, and notifications.
FEATURE GOALS
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1
Enable continuing a started checkout by reminding users of an unfinished car order.
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2
Establish entry points from multiple AutoScout pages to the unfinished checkout process.
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3
Mobile-first design, since the majority of visits happen via mobile phones and browsers.
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PROBLEM STATEMENT
'How might we hook car buyers back into their unfinished car order process through multiple entry points, once they've already started the process.'
UNFINISHED ORDERS APPROACH
In order to design a seamless order completion process, a variety of product design processes were used to arrive at the final design. We experimented with various layouts and entry points, which allowed us to consider various structural layouts and designs to hook users back into their unfinished orders. Ideation sessions were conducted, and through multiple iterations and explorations, we landed on final designs for each entry point.
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My Account Design 1 - List Component
In the 'my account' section, there exists a section of previously purchased cars. This design involves adding a simple list component with a link to continue an unfinished order. The option to also delete the reminder also exists as a secondary CTA.
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My Account Design 2 - Large Component
This design features a larger component for the my account unfinished order. This draws more attention to the unfinished order and differentiates it better from previous orders.
⭐️ Final design ⭐️
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Homepage Entry Design 1 - Floating Action Button
Having a floating action button on the homepage would help draw more attention to the open order, establishing high importance and persistence.
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Homepage Design Design 2 - Floating Bottom Drawer
Similar to the Floating Action Button design, the floating bottom drawer builds a more urgent sense of importance to the unfinished order. The drawer design allows more information and key CTAs to be displayed.
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Homepage Entry Design 3 - Card Component
Using the placement of the existing cards on the homepage, the placement of this card allows users to be reminded immediately of an unfinished checkout when landing on the AutoScout homepage.
⭐️ Final design ⭐️
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Unfinished Orders - Other Considerations
Since users should be able to access an unfinished order from other entry points, the team created designs for additional (less critital) entry points and edge cases. For example, if a car becomes unavailable in the time that the user leaves and returns to the purchase process, the user should be notified and be able to search for similar cars. Additionally, reminding users of their current unfinished order as they browse other car detail pages helps users make more informed choices.
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Unfinished Order on Unavailable Car
If a car becomes unavailable in the time that the user leaves and returns to the purchase process, we created a design for it to be visible in the 'My Account' section and for users to be able to view for similar cars.
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External Emails and Push Notifications
External entry points are also crucial in helping hook users back into the AutoScout24 site and app. This helps remind users who haven't visited the AutoScout platform recently.
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'Checkout Fork' - Other Car Detail Pages
If a user is browsing a separate car listing, we designed a sidebar to remind users that they currently already have a car in a checkout process. This helps users make more informed decisions, in case they forgot about a previous unfinished order and are trying to buy a different car, or want to compare listings.
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IMPACT
From the design methods and processes used, the project successfully addressed the original problem statement and is now live! Users can now continue their unfinished car order processes using multiple entry points into Smyle and can be reminded of their car buying progress. Now, in addition to other post-MVP designs, it has been proven (through continued web analytics and testing) that users can buy a car just as easily online.
Conclusion
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Designing in two languages!
Since Edenspiekermann is based in Berlin, Germany, some clients were German and/or just preferred things in German. Having to design for both languages is certainly a big takeaway from this project, as the German language can vary a lot from English. Mainly when considering content design, character count, sentence lengths, symbols, and design norms vary between German and English, therefore I learned to account for various edge-cases and design scenarios for each language.
Agency vs In-House
Prior to this internship, all my previous design experience had been in in-house product teams, which meant working on one product or one feature with my entire design team. At the Edenspiekermann agency, I was working with a new client and new product every month (including Autoscout24), so naturally, the design work and design deliverables were totally different and took some adjusting. I had to focus on learning about what the client prioritized and actually cared about.
Read about my design internship experience at Edenspiekermann on Medium!
