Depop Case Study
For a better seller experience
What is depop?
Depop is a social e-commerce platform where users can buy and resell their clothes.
Background
As someone who is passionate about the fashion industry and has worked there for several years, but mainly focused on B2B, I was looking for a fashion marketplace that promotes sustainability and focuses more on the end user (B2C). What really caught my eye on Depop is that 90% of the app users are gen Z, so I was really curious to see how this generation perceives the industry and makes money out of it.
Tradeoffs
To start working on this case study, I decided to use the application myself. When signing up as a seller, I noticed that one of the major tradeoffs that the product team has decided to implement is that you can't complete your registration without having a PayPal account.
While this tradeoff definitely decreases the conversion rate between how many users start the process and how many of them complete it and become actual sellers on the application, I assume that they did this for two main reasons:
1 .Paypal and Stripe are the only payment option for now on the application. Depop doesn’t want people to sell their items and then get face issues at the collections stage. They therefore added it as an entry barrier rather than a later issue.
2 .Usually there is an onboarding process and account managers in Depop who manage their sellers. In order to optimize time and HR capacity, it makes more sense to focus on the people who are most likely to actually sell on the application, and not waste time managing everyone who comes around.
Overall, this choice was made to ensure efficiency for both the sellers and the Depop team, even if that means losing some potential sellers in the process.
Users
I started with a quantitive analysis. I conducted a survey which received 32 responses. The survey was designed to assess the user journey map and the finding are as follows:
Looking at these numbers I decided to dig deeper and perform a qualitative analysis regarding the fee, as it has the lowest score.
I contacted Three customers for interviews. My criteria were to choose customers with different experiences and from different segments, in order to understand if this issue is only present for a certain type of seller.
Findings
90% of Depop sellers are using other applications to sell, mostly eBay, Poshmark and Mecari
83% of Depop sellers don’t have previous experience in selling clothes
Experienced sellers are coming to the platform to reach Gen Z, as 90% of depop users are Gen Z
People struggle to understand the fees
Depop product listing process is one of a kind, it’s easy and simple enough that first time sellers don’t face any confusion or issues.
Pain Points
By now I am aware of some of the major pains faced by the sellers, but I wanted to make sure that I am tackling the right problems. I decided to join a Facebook group and perform research on the most asked topics and keyword research, and the pains that the customers mentioned most, to understand if this is an individual problem or a common one.
Summary
1. Users are not aware of the fees and how much they will get after selling (net)
2. No strong policy to back the buyers against scammers sellers
3. although the item listing process is very simple, the quality of the listings is low because users are not experienced in how to create a good listing. This then affects the customer experience.
Improvements
When the seller registers, they will go through an onboarding process where all the information regarding
A) Selling Fees
B) Product listing
C) Tools that they might need
D) Frequently asked questions
is displayed.
eBay is a good case practice on how to onboard sellers in just one step. eBay was also mentioned by +80% of the sellers as a second application they are using to sell, so the comparison is definitely relevant.
In the product listing page, for each product that is still available, add a new field where the estimated payment (money the seller will get after all fees are paid) is displayed. When clicking on the total amount, it should show the fees in detail.
Key metrics
% CS tickets - Payment related
% Sellers churn rate
% Active sellers
% Sellers LTV
What i learned
When thinking about a solution, I didn’t want to come up with something that would require a long time to be developed and I didn’t want to break the existing customer flow, as the sellers are working well with its simplicity. This is why I focused on how to add unnoticeable clarifications in the current product, without a major change that would hugely impact the seller experience.