What is the Problem statement?
App to buy and sell used books
Research
First I started to explore about the problem statement by asking some common questions like
Do we really need an app to buy and sell used books ?
Why do we need an app to buy and sell used books?
Nowadays everything is available online do people really read hard copies of books?
What will be the root causes of the problem by talking to the users to understand what is the problems they are facing in buying or selling old books.
Who will be the Target Audience ?
The target audience here is very broad as it includes anyone who is interested to buy and sell used books.There may be readers who love to read novels and Students who read for their educational purposes and other User segment who are preparing for competitive exams like JEE,NEET,UPSC etc.
Major User Segments
1. School Students ( Books related to school curriculum)
2. College Students ( Books related to academics and Interview preparation)
3. People Preparing for competitive exams
4. People who read for gaining knowledge ( Professors and Professionals)
5. People who read books in their Leisure time (Hobby of Reading books ,Reading Novels )
6. Others
These user segments were classified based on my interview with an old book shop owner at my place.
Conducting a User Survey
I wanted to talk to users who are really the target audience of this product(i.e users who really need this app )wanted to screen them with the help of a simple survey.I forwarded the survey link in community, college and Family WhatsApp groups and email groups to get responses.
Questions in the Survey
- Personal Details ( Name and Phone Number)
- Purpose of Reading books ( Multiple Choice questions refer piechart fig 1)
- Do you prefer to read books ( Hard Copies)? Yes/No (Will help me to screen-out users who says no)
- How often you read hard copy books?
Options: a)Everyday b)Every week c)Every month(at-least once) d)Others - How many books have you finished reading?
- Have you bought any old books? Yes/No
- Have you sold any of your books? Yes/No
User Interview
Based on the survey I interviewed 8 users which included various users like Student, Software developer, Author, NEET Aspirant, JEE Aspirant, Final Year Student,Entrepreneur and Grandfather.After talking with users I came to know their needs and what’s their process of buying or selling old books.
Questions I asked to the users during the Interview
- Why do you buy used Books ? ( To understand why users like to buy old books and which will help me to get to know the reasons)
- What is the process of buying old books?(Here I asked the last experience when they bought old books from a offline store or from online stores)
- What are the things they look into while buying an old books? ( This will help to get to know their requirements and also I asked them to tell based on their priority)
- From where do they buy old books ? ( This will help me to know about the competitors )
- Are they interested to sell their old books and what price they would like to sell and what kind of platform they use if any? ( This will help me to get to know users requirement if they want to sell their books)
- What are the expectations if you want to buy or sell your books online?(This will help me to get to know what are the features they need in the app)
- How often they buy books? ( To know how much books they buy in an year on an average)
Interview Synthesis
Here are the interview notes based on my conversation with target audience
Personas
Affinity Mapping
Here I am grouping the users needs to identify the features we can have in our app.
Features
Here are the list of features that are ideated based on the users needs
User Stories
As a Buyer, I want to get used books at low cost,So that I can save money
As a Seller, I want to sell used books at best price,So that I can gain money
These are two main group of users and their user story
Feature Prioritizations
We cannot develop the entire product at start so first we will be launching the MVP ( Minimum Viable Product ) we the features that are mandatory to solve the problem of buying and selling old books.I have used the value vs complexity matrix method to prioritise the features.Some of the features that are mandatory include customer support ,terms and conditions and help information.
Value represent how the particular feature will be useful for customers and the Complexity represents how much efforts it will take for delivering the feature ( Designing, Development, Testing and deploying into production).
Competitor Analysis
Primary Competitors
BookChor
BookSyndy
Buy My Book
Deal My Book
Show My Book
Secondary Competitors
OLX
Tertiary Competitors
Amazon
Flipkart
Insights from Competitor Analysis
All our Primary Competitors do not have a Good User Experience
These Apps do not have a User Onboarding
Necessary details in Products description for the users are not present
Apps do not have a Map View
Good Categorisation and Search experience can be improved
Easy to use Filters can be present
Trust factor can be established with Reviews and Ratings
Quality of books are not present
Less Variety of Books available
After reading the reviews of this apps in the app store and came to know the above are the most common issues
Total Addressable Market size
95 Million People are interested in Reading English books So the total market size is greater than this as there will be other language readers too.
Reference: Medium Article
Key Performance Indicators
How are we going to measure success?
Number of Signups
Total number of books listed
Total number of books sold
Active time of users
Number of active users
Users requesting for payment option and Logistic integrations
Number of inactive users
Number of users buying books from Near-buy location
Ratings and Reviews
Number of searches per day/week/month/year
How will we generate Revenue
- Major Source of income as of now is using Ads like Google Ads and Ad Choices by placing the ads in such a place that will not spoil the user experience
- Affiliate income by promoting products that will be useful for our target audience like courses, ebooks and other useful products.
- After Payment option and integration with Delhivery like service we will be charging a commission as our app will take care of end to end delivery of used books from sellers to buyers.
User Flow Diagram
App Sketches
Splash screen and User onboarding
Using Modern and Open source illustrations to make users easily understand how we are going to help.
Use UX writing to clearly convey our solution to users.
Sign in,Sign up and OTP Verification
- User can sign up with gmail id or phone number.Having an email id is not mandatory.When i was speaking to the users many people in the age of 50 or 60+ do not have a mail id but have their mobile number.
- Two step authentication with OTP to provide safety.
- User can enter all the details after signing up with gmail id or phone number.
Home,Product Listing and Description Screens
Help Users easily search for the book they want by categorising it
Search Experience: Autocorrect, Autocomplete, Trending Search and Search history.
Product Page : Easy to view the images of the product and see its conditions( Buy and chat with the seller).
Filter and Sort: Using the similar kind of Filter and Sort functionality as in Amazon app. ( Based on Jakob’s Law )
I have attached the above image so that the Designers and developers can easily understand the type of filter we want.
For Buyers: Search based on Location,Chat with Seller and Thanking users and Getting user feedback
- User will be able to see the nearest seller and close the sell easily reducing the extra charges.
- Users can chat with the sellers if they have any doubts related to the books listed or the price.
- Users can chat with the sellers if they have any doubts related to the books listed or the price.
- Getting user rating and feedback to understand their experience.
Seller Filling the details of the books they want to sell,Sell Orders,FAG and Customer Support
- Buyers can add the necessary details and upload the images if the book from gallery or directly taking the pic.
- Users also have some hints if they don’t know about the particular informations.
- Buyers can add remarks price and also have the freedom to give the buyer an opportunity to bargain.
- Frequently asked questions are answered and if any doubt or help they can ask their query in the chatbot.
Payments and Logistics
For Online payments we will be using the Razorpay and for logistics we will be using Delhivery. I choose Razorpay after discussing with developers because it supports all the options like UPI,Card,Wallet and QR and easier to integrate.Delhivery also has easy to use user interface for user and the user can easily track the package.
For more details developers can refer to the docs for implementation
https://razorpay.com/docs/payment-gateway/android-integration/standard/
https://razorpay.com/integrations/
https://delhivery-express-api-doc.readme.io/reference
Suggestions and Next Steps
- All empty states should be handled properly bu UX designers
- Low-fidelity Prototypes and High fidelity prototypes will be tested and evaluated
- Heuristic evaluation Principles will be used to evaluate our Prototype.
- We will also test the High-fidelity prototype with real users
Technology Stack Suggestion
Flutter would be a better suggestion for developing the App as with one code base we can develop an Android as well as IOS app and also Flutter Web is developing.
For Backend we can use Firebase or any other Database which will help us to perform data operations.
Marketing and Growth
We can promote our app in Book Readers Community to acquire the first set of users. ( Example :https://www.litsy.com/web/home)
Also can ask the Youtubers and bloggers who create content related to books to promote our app.
Future Enhancements
- Payment option Integration ( Pay online with UPI and Card payments)
- Booklelo wallet and Loyalty points
- Swap/Exchange books
- Rent book and Read
- Including membership option like Bewakoof.com(Tribe offers) based on the number of users and books listed
- Doing User testing and Interviews to know what are the other features they may need
- Ability to create micro-communities and groups inside our app to increase user engagement
- Referral system so that users can earn loyalty points by referring friends
Best UX Practices to be followed
Please refer this slide for building this product with great user experience
It was really an awesome journey in building this product case study.Learnt a lot from talking with users understanding their pain points, building personas and much more.