MARSHA STRAJNSAK • PRODUCT DESIGNER
Vendor Portal.
Pandemic induced design.
This is a story about Jim - a loyal customer of British Car Auctions (BCA)*. He owns a small car dealership in south-east London and heavily relies on BCA for his stock acquisition, logistics and storage. Every week he scores some good deals through BCA auctions and makes a trip to one of their centres to inspect his newly purchased vehicles. He makes sure they are sold as seen, cleaned and repaired properly and provided with all the necessary documents for their new owner. 

Then Covid happens. BCA site operating hours are drastically reduced and his access is limited, having to coordinate with every other vendor trying to do the same. He doesn’t know if his vehicles are ready. He fears they won’t live up to customer expectations. He doesn’t like the photos that were taken, which aren’t showing off the vehicle the way he imagined. Finally, if he does sell any of them, it takes him hours to reach someone, on a phone line that is always busy, just to find out the status of their delivery.
*British Car Auctions (BCA) is a leading B2B car auction company in the UK . They conduct physical and online auctions for a variety of vehicles, across multiple locations across UK. In addition to selling vehicles, they also help vendors prepare, repair, document and transport and re-list vehicles for resale.
Context
A project that later became known as Vendor Portal had to address just that - a way for our customers, who were no longer able to physically access our auction centres and sites, to attend auctions, buy vehicles, inspect vehicles, list them, sell them and manage their transport and post-sale activities.
I worked as a product designer in a team of 7 (1 product owner, 4 developers, 1 solution architect and myself). I was responsible for discovery, UX/UI design and testing. Alongside the PO I supported the team throughout development and helped prioritise and prepare a roadmap for future releases and improvements.
Research & Discovery
In collaboration with our research team, we conducted 16 interviews focusing customer needs and expectations, the impact of Covid on their business, their relationship with BCA and BCA competitors and their expectations for future BCA service.
In collaboration with our research team, we conducted 16 interviews focusing customer needs and expectations, the impact of Covid on their business, their relationship with BCA and BCA competitors and their expectations for future BCA service.
We learnt that their experience was generally positive but they did struggle with remarketing, given their in-person checks were now very limited. We understood that any online process would have to be simple and mimic their in-person “walk-the-line” process. They carried out reviews on a sale by sale basis and needed to be aware of key stages of vehicle processing as soon as possible so that they could action them before sale. They found communication with BCA one of the more consuming tasks, as it could take up to 5 days to resolve a problem - this was often too late to catch the next sale. Lastly, they would need clear and accurate vehicle listing that they can trust, since they will not be personally inspecting the vehicle.
Design
I had the following goals​
Seamless digital experience
simplify processes from pre-sale, throughout sale to postsale
Transparency
Provide a clear view of the vendor’s vehicles and their lifecycle
24/7 self-service
empow vendors to fast resolution of their common issues
Data and insights
Provide key information to support informed decisions on listing and pricing
Key challenge
Create a digital experience for users that are not tech-savvy and are used to carrying out the majority of their work offline. Build trust with our customers, who are accustomed to resolving issues and reviewing cars personally, on-site.
-
Vendor dashboard
-
Breakdown of vehicles based on sales, active bids and unsold vehicles
-
Vehicle lists with key information and easy access to vehicle reports and documentation
-
Timeline of changes made to each vehicle
-
Detail view where vendors can manage pricing and queries
First concept
I shared the concept with the product team where we discussed feasibility and listed unknowns to be confirmed:
-
Internally we needed to check we had the correct data points (statuses, process history, dahsboard breakdowns, authentication methods, communication streams options...)
-
​Externally, we needed to validate the concept with users.
Testing
We selected a varied group of different types of customers, ranging from small dealers to some of our biggest dealerships, to make sure the process works for all of them. I prepared a prototype of testers to interact with and encouraged them to share honest feedback and answer questions on various relevant topics.
User Journey
Does this solution adequately correspond to their review process?
Notification preferences
How early do they normally review a vehicle (at which point should we highlight it to them)?
Information architecture
Which vehicles and sales are top priority and how do they normally tackle them?
Data and insights
Is anything missing in order for them to carry out their reviews?
Actionability
Are they able to complete all of their tasks online without additional guidance?
Learnings
​Vendors loved the new view and were exited to use it but it did need some changes.
​They requested a sales view with highlighted issues so that they can prioritise what to look at first
I added a Sales view and highlighted items to review
​They wanted to flag and annotate vehicles to come back to for problem resolution. This would also help them collaborate with BCA account managers who were often assisting with reported issues.
I added a flagging feature, allowing them to mark a vehicle for review and add a note to it. Notes could be private or visible to their BCA account manager.
​They wouldn’t trust a chat area to get answers - they would still rather call or send an email.
Chat feature was deprioritised. I added an option to notify the BCA team when flagging an issue.
What they cared about most was resolving documentation and photos issues and setting their prices. Vehicles of lower grades, high value or previously unsold were also of particular interest for review.
I added an on-site date stamp which signifies vehicles are ready for photo and document inspection. I also added different filters for missing information, documents or vehicles of interest.
Handoff & Development
​I prepared a walkthrough for developers where I presented the designs. I highlighted all design system components and any newly required components and split the work into tickets, prioritised based on value assessment above (essential vs nice to have). We agreed to release incrementally, with the first release including all essential items.
We needed to set up a new salesforce infrastructure to manage customer messages and notes
​
We needed to set up a database automation to automatically connect users to their latest account manager (previously managed via excel)
​
We needed to link sales channels to vendor portal.
Implementation challenges
Release
​We released a pilot product to 12 companies (10%, 27 users) 3 weeks prior to full release to ensure the data we provided was correct and useful and our communications channels worked efficiently.
Onboarding email to vendors
Intro call with account manager, product and UX to present new product and set expectations
Set up channels to share feedback and raise issues
Set up a weekly feedback meeting
We monitored their feedback continuously and prioritised key iterations before further rollout. Non-pilot customers were made aware of the upcoming changes through a “Coming Soon” holding page, which also helped us gauge interest through number of clicks on “Find out more”.
In the meantime I also supported our marketing team in order to prepare FAQ, educational video, onboarding emails and press release ahead of feature release to all customers.
One last thing to fix
Last minute pilot feedback helped us realise next day sale management was impossible for Monday as we did not account for weekends.
We prioritised this additional logic over some "nice-to-have" features in order to have it read for full rollout.
Edge cases - during stress testing we learnt that some vehicles were sold while offsite and could be sold without ever coming back on site.
We introduced additional tracking and statuses in our internal system and made sure vendors were still alerted to sold vehicles that were never on site.
In order for this to work well, all changes to the vehicle and all related communication needed to be held in the portal.
We ran internal education sessions for account managers to ensure business processes were adjusted.
Results & Impact
Throughout the workshop, we established our current user journey and also laid out planned future features, which helped us divide our product into meaningful sections and agree on a new structure.
92% of vendors accessing their Vendor Portal continued to use it
92% First time conversion rate
Queries regarding status of vehicle, requests for changes, requests for sale information - reduced by 63%
Inbound traffic queries reduced by 63%
Average unit unsold time reduced by 33% (from 3 to 2 weeks)
Average unsold time reduced by 33%
-
Users appreciated dealership filters, ability to flag and export, early visibility of stock and ability to add internal and external notes.
-
Dashboard provides a helpful overview of their account
-
Tiled layout makes it simple to use and easy to navigate
-
Headline information is helpful in planning and prioritising
Vendors also recognised that managing their stock and sales online freed up their time to work on other things - this particularly applied to bigger customers who have a lot of stock and previously spent a lot of time travelling.
Customer feedback
“I’m a detail person so I’d like breakdowns of everything too. So if I was to click on the vehicles to sell tab, then I’d like to see
specifically what vehicles are in there, split into runners and non- runners, which ones have already been through a sale, CAP
value. So yeah, logging in and seeing that dashboard and then being able to drill down into the detail is very interesting.”
“The real power lies in being able to click into each data point and focus on specifics.”
​“Great start makes life easier we are able to sort by our dealers instead of looking at group 1 as a whole really useful”
“Great start makes life easier we are able to sort by our dealers instead of looking at group 1 as a whole really useful”
But wait, there's more...
During our testing phase, we kept close track of all the feedback and categorised it into essential, nice-to-have and potential future ideas.
Essential
-
​Seeing all vehicles on site
-
Filters focused on what’s missing
-
Lower grades
-
High value
-
Unsold
-
Missing CAP/reserve
-
Missing documents
Nice to have
-
Flagging vehicles
-
Adding notes
-
Export options
-
Status reports
-
Status date stamps
-
Link to sale
-
Report issues
-
Different levels of access based on dealership
-
Pricing guidelines​
Future requests
-
Audit trail
-
Unsold vehicles breakdown
-
Transport tracking
Made it to first release
After a very successful first release, we focused on resolving remaining customer challenges and expanding our vendor portal.
-
Transport tracking
-
Audit trail
-
Pricing guidelines
-
Unsold vehicle breakdown and management
-
Provisional bid management
.png)
Final Thoughts
-
Working on a completely new product from start to finish was a fantastic experience
-
I was very fortunate to have access to customers for continuous feedback
-
There was more operational impact than expected - Sometimes a lot of things can happen behind the curtains that we do not understand until it becomes very relevant. It’s important to consider existing technical setup and aim for automation
-
Often things that make sense to us don’t make sense to someone from a different generation - so user feedback is extremely important when working with a variety of user groups.
And Jim is happy now :)