Minimisecost

  • Ecommerce

A price bidding platform to foster the way people purchase electronic appliances

Website layout of minimisecost an ecommerce bidding platform

Defining the Problem

How often do we struggle to find the best deal while buying electronic devices and home appliances? After juggling between several websites and eCommerce auction software, we still fail to find the most suitable deal online or offline. Our client wanted to simply eliminate this problem and create a solution that lets buyers get truly amazing prices on select mobile phones and home appliances.

Our research

  • 71% of shoppers believe they will get a better deal online than in stores.
  • According to a study by Persistence Market Research the future growth of the global consumer electronic market is “staggering”, and predicts it hitting US$2.9 trillion by 2020.
  • What’s driving this growth is the boom in demand for smartphones, wearables and smart homes devices, coupled with the rapidly increasing online market.

Enhancing the idea

Although the client had some idea on what he wanted to achieve, he had less clarity of how it would work in terms of web application. Our team went above and beyond to ideate a solution that the client had only just imagined.

After long discussions with the client, we introduced the idea of creating a price bidding platform where interested buyers can add different price bids for the same product, for a given quantity. On the other hand suppliers too can add their respective bids for the same. Eventually Minimise cost will work as a mediator to get both parties the best deal.

After structuring the idea, the real struggle was to visualize how it would really look and work. This is where our team of business analysts, UI designers and UX architects came in handy.

The design challenge

A price bidding system is not the most common way of buying things online and we wanted to make sure that it wouldn’t overwhelm and confuse the users. So we had to create the design keeping in mind the information our users already had and what they were trying to achieve.

The key users were kept in mind as both their user journeys were similar yet needed to be differentiated. To help us get perspective on our design process and maintain the authenticity of the platform we completely engraved ourselves in active design thinking.

Identifying users & their
challenges

  • Mapping purchase intent to offering best deal from suppliers
  • Reverse Bid – Enabling suppliers to offer best deals which consider buyer interest
  • Eventually placing the order based on the offer from supplier
  • Order management for back office staff

User flow diagram

User flow diagram of minimisecost an ecommerce bidding platform

Design Conceptualization

Our agile methodology and design sprint planning helped us make the design better in the here and now. An array of features were outlined after an extensive requirement gathering to put the website to its best potential and make it the “go to” platform for anyone looking to buy electronic products or home appliances.

Based on user roles identified, we had to figure out how to create minimal design that would go along with the brand name – ie. Minimise Cost. So we created multiple wireframes to get a rough skeleton of the actual product.

Client Challenge

Minimise Cost

Our Challenge

Minimise Friction

Design conceptualization of minimisecost an ecommerce bidding platform

Visual and Aesthetic Design

Next we moved on to creating the interface and visual design for the bidding platform. The overall look was kept minimalistic with more graphical content, the actual phones and appliances were shown with limited typography. We created different thematic UI references to choose from. Finally the client preferred the combination of whites and blues to keep it elegant and realistic. All this was done keeping in mind the client’s preference as well as the users and how they would achieve their end goal as seamlessly as possible.

Visual aesthetic design of minimisecost an ecommerce bidding platform

Core UX fundamentals

The foundation of good UX design is ensuring at all times that the user can achieve their tasks with minimal effort. Keeping that in mind, we kept the app clean and aesthetically pleasing. Our team of UX consultants and UI architects helped design a highly responsive and intuitive mobile and web app.

Buyers

  • Offer them most prominent deals and “Interest Focused” design
  • Quick checkout process

Sellers

  • Transparency for seeing best incoming interested buyers and figure out the best deal
  • Experience of making an offer and place a bid for a product
  • Efficiently maintain product catalog with control on Price with higher degree of maneuverability.

Admin

  • Birds eye view of buyers, products, sellers and orders.
  • Easy management with simple interface design

Marketing

  • Notification experience via email with elegant email design that drives maximum click through rate.

The final takeaway

Getting a chance to work with a client who has a clear vision is one in a million. Our client wanted to fill the gap that he believed existed in the market of electronic appliances. He also believed that a platform like this could really do well as there weren’t many other close competitors. Keeping this authenticity in mind and staying true to our clients vision, we successfully finished The Minimise cost website.

Screen snaps of minimisecost an ecommerce bidding platform

It’s the skill and expertise of IndiaNIC that truly shines through this very complicated project. They did a terrific job in conceptualising and visually representing my idea

Praveen Sharma

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