localoco

Project Overview

Revitalize local businesses with modern consumer shopping experience

Key words

Marketplace for local businesses
Hyperlocal social network
Review system

Problem Statement

The Internet has made the world more connected, but it has also diminished our "sense of attachment to the local neighborhood". Furthermore, supporting local businesses often requires navigating outdated technology, which can be inconvenient. All these have resulted in a disconnect between local communities and the businesses that serve them, leading to a decline in local commerce.

Goal

Streamline the process of supporting local shopping and enhance community engagement.

Task

Investigate the potential for an online marketplace for local businesses, focusing on consumer experience optimization.

Solution

A platform that combines the features of a marketplace and social network to address every aspect of the local business experience.

Impact

150% Increase

in target audience's willingness to shop locally with the mobile prototype, based on a survey of 30 millennials.

Pain Point

Discovering local businesses is difficult

Pain Point

Businesses fail to engage customers

Pain Point

Local shopping is not as convenient

Pain Point

The current review system has low credibility

cause

Best-in-class solution, Yelp, focuses on restaurant reviews

cause

Customers are on social media yet businesses still use traditional ads

cause

Local shopping is ill-suited for millennials' shopping journey

cause

The system is plagued with fake, biased, and incentivized entries

Solution

A centralized marketplace for every local business

Solution

SMBs must remain active on social media

Solution

A digital platform that encompasses all stages of the shopping journey

Solution

Authentic and organic peer-generated endorsement

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Coalesced Solution

A marketplace + social network platform that manages all aspects of local businesses experience

Learn more about how I arrived at this solution

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Research & Strategy

Understand and resolve the disconnect between local businesses and millennials

The comfort and convenience offered by e-commerce is apparent and complex, especially in regards to the shopping habits of young consumers. Understanding their impact on purchasing decisions is crucial to developing practical solutions that can make local businesses more competitive in today's market.

The baseline

To start things off, I surveyed industry for common features in local business marketplaces to engage modern customers.

How do millennials shop locally?

As the largest living generation and major consumer demographic, the shopping habits and views on community of millennials were studied through secondary research for this forward-thinking project.

40%

of millennial shopping still occurs at physical store locations

63%

consult product reviews before shopping in-store, with 60% seeking out 1-star reviews

64%

feel disconnected from their local community and seek to be more involved

51%

consider local businesses vital for the community, yet only 37% have shopped locally

It's important to understand why millennials don't shop locally as much as they wish, even though they value their importance to the community. They also heavily rely on product reviews, giving extra weight to negative ones, when making purchasing decisions.

Millennial's shopping journey

Interviews with four millennials revealed following pain points:

Unaware of local stores

Limited solutions exist to discover information about stores in their neighborhood.

Arduous research

Users must use multiple tools to research local businesses

Low motivation in reviews

Users are reluctant to write reviews due to the perceived lack of reward for their effort.

Low trust in reviews

Existing review systems are susceptible to manipulation through fake or biased reviews.

The key finding of the interviews synthesis is millennial's cyclic shopping journey (depicted below), with social media involved in 3 out of 4 stages: discovery, research, purchase and feedback.

Improving local shopping journey

After identifying several areas for improvement during the shopping journey, I used an Impact-Effort matrix to help me prioritized two unique opportunities with high potential outcomes.

Social media heavily influences millennials' shopping habits.

Often serving as the starting and ending point of their journey, social media is also where they gather information and interact with brands.

❶ a native hyperlocal social network

A hyperlocal social network (think Nextdoor) for local businesses has potential for success due to its focus on the local economy. Integrating a social network with a marketplace opens up new possibilities and benefits for customers, merchants, and the platform.

Reviews are a crucial part of the shopping research for millennials.

Despite reading more reviews than they write, millennials are cautious of positive reviews and place a greater emphasis on negative ones.

❷ Reviews from user-generated content

UGC from social media will increase the volume and quality of positive and neutral reviews, giving a voice to the majority of customers who don't usually leave reviews. This will resolve the issue of limited reviews, skewed reviews, and fake/biased entries and result in a more accurate representation.

Design & Prototype

Design a seamless and integrated shopping experience

Having a clear vision of the marketplace plus social network, I centered my focus on three user flows that encompass the majority of scenarios.

app_shortcut

Browsing on a social network with no initial buying intentions

Searching for products with strong purchase intent

diversity_3

Consulting with friends and neighbors for buying decisions

View prototype ➔

The casual browser

This scenario represents the classic shopping journey of millennials. Users are able to complete the entire process within the LocaLoco app without having to leave, creating a seamless and integrated experience. This reduces bounce rates and increases conversion.

The Urgent Shopper

This scenario targets users who have a clear idea of what they want to purchase. These users benefit from keyword or map search with specific filtering options and accurate location information. To make it easily accessible, I have dedicated a bottom tab solely for Search.

The Cautious Buyer

The native social network allows user to find genuine and personal feedback from friends and neighbors with prior experience with specific merchants or products. This feature is enabled by sharing shopping history, which allows others to access it through either user profiles or merchant/product screens. As a bonus for local community, it promotes social interactions through messaging.

Iteration

In pursuit of smooth and clear user flows

Version 1 sketches

Version 1 wireframes

The prototype underwent a significant revision (from v1 to v2). The first version incorporated desirable features from competitors, but had a fragmented design and lacked cohesiveness, particularly in the Home Screen. This resulted in user confusion due to multiple features (map view, business categories, news, and social feed) being crowded on one screen.

In the updated version 2, user flows were improved, priorities reevaluated, and the information architecture redesigned. The Home Screen now only displays the social feed, putting the social network at the forefront, and features were moved to the Search and Bulletin tabs for better clarity.

The updated version also includes minor changes with refined and more consistent design, including but not limited to:

Before

After

Pills are enlarged (min. 30px height + 10px space above & below) for easier tapping on mobile devices
Increased background blur for more contrast with the text
Increases text size
Bottom tabs are no longer omnipresent to avoid navigational confusion with back arrrow

Simplified information and enhanced readability on search results
Easy clearance of applied filters directly on search results screen

Before

After

Before

After

Prioritized Community Mentions to improve review visibility
Implemented floating shopping cart for quick access
Revamped information architecture with improved legibility

Enhanced color contrast and text legibility
Revised instructional language for clarity

Before

After

Before

After

Forgo sliding card style for clearer hierarchy

Sparing use of brand color to highlight key information

Before

After

Before

After

Implementing consistent design system throughout prototype

Postmortem

When 1 + 1 > 2

Project Summary

I designed a platform combining a hyperlocal social network and marketplace for local businesses to encourage millennials to shop locally. The social network brings visibility, traffic, and feedback, while the marketplace provides the convenience millennials are accustomed to. The combination offers synergistic opportunities resulting in a product that is more than the sum of its parts, and is intuitive and easy to use.

Success Matrix

150% Increase

in target audience's willingness to shop locally with the mobile prototype, based on a survey of 30 millennials.

Lesson Learned

Early on, I decided to build a native social network due to its outsized impact on purchasing decisions. However, my concern about the challenge of attracting users to a new social network consumed an excessive amount of time, and it wasn't until I focused on fixing the review system that I discovered the synergistic potential of combining a social network with a marketplace. I learned the importance of taking an act-first attitude from this experience.

Future Direction

My main focus in this project is the hyperlocal social network from a consumer perspective. For the next step, I aim to improve the design for both the social network and marketplace from a merchant's point of view.

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