The journey of rethinking the marketplace

The marketplace had been grown fast by attracting users for high cashbacks and discounts, but UI was outdated and UX was too generic. It didn't reflect the specifics of different categories like fashion, beauty, FMCG, etc, which made it hard to scale and it affected conversion.

My task was to build a consistent and the same time flexible system — something scalable, but still unique for each category. It wasn't just about visuals — it was a full rethinking of how customers interact with the marketplace.

The first step was to collect inspiring products in terms of user interface, communication, and positioning, explaining exactly what I liked and wanted to use as a basis for the visual language and design principles of our new marketplace.

After searching for a visual language, I moved on to defining design principles to determine what would set us apart from competitors in our niche and what our value would be to the user. Together with the design director and the main product owner, I conducted a workshop, as a result of which we determined the basic principles and values of our future product.

My next step was to understand the patterns behind how people actually shop — why and when they decide to buy, and how they search for the products they're ready to purchase. I ran surveys with users who had made different types of purchases in the past week, and from that I identified 4 core behavior patterns.

Using these four main shopping scenarios as a foundation, I started shaping the functionality a marketplace should have and how it could help users make a purchase, no matter how clear or formed their need was.

As a result, I generated more than 45 ideas for what a marketplace could look like, each with its problem statement and contextual use case. These ranged from straightforward concepts like an AI-powered search assistant to more unconventional directions — for example, a turnkey digital replica of your home with items organized by real-life categories.

Of course, no one needs to implement all the ideas at once. It was necessary to determine the core idea and functionality, so I grouped all the ideas according to the main messages.

Overall, I came up with 9 complete concepts. One was the minimum viable version — the core fixes we needed to implement first, without any bells and whistles — and the other 8 explored various possible directions for the marketplace.

After aligning the core flow with the main stakeholders, I joined the product teams across the entire funnel — from the homepage to post-checkout — to start implementing the concept together with the designers in each team.

Every piece of the product has been updated not only based on the concept, but also taking into account research, metrics, and progressive A/B testing. This eventually led to significant results across the entire funnel.

At the same time, while the core flow was being transformed, I continued developing additional concepts that would enhance the user experience, taking into account the specific needs and behaviors of each category.