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Through long term partnership we help our clients in the long run.
As Marktplaats' design partner since 2013, Hike One has formed a long-term, strategic partnership with them, and worked together to develop their product and processes, as well as grow and nurture their design team. We conduct research, support them by quickly finding the right talent for a particular project, advise on strategic decisions, and provide training for their designers. Marktplaats' strong vision and appreciation of good design has made working with them a very positive journey.
Marktplaats is the Netherlands' largest online marketplace for selling and buying new and second-hand items. They're continuously looking to improve the buyer and seller user experience. As a large organisation with a wide variety of design needs, Marktplaats has been climbing the UX maturity ladder in order to innovate their product and improve design processes through research, design tools, work flows and infrastructure.
Digital design is a fundamental part of any e-commerce platform that has a complex user base, such as with Marktplaats, whose goal is to invoke trust in both seller and buyer during all stages of the user journey. Transactions and the listing process must be intuitive and seamless, and the design must reflect the brand ethos. The backend and frontend must ensure that both sellers and buyers flow through a safe, secure, easy-to-use and reliable ecosystem. All this while staying ahead of the competition.
An important factor in the success of Martkplaats is their long-term vision and appreciation of design. They are open to experimentation and exploration of new ideas. This creates a happy and innovative working environment for the ultimate level of quality they seek.
When we first joined Marktplaats, our assignment was to conduct lean experiments to identify and validate underlying assumptions for new or existing solutions to redesign their product. In that time, we conducted bi-weekly tests where we validated a high number of assumptions over a short time, while also carrying out monthly usability tests.
Having Hike One as a strategic design partner has helped us to stay focussed on our mission by providing the right value for all of our users that love to trade on our platforms.
The research needs of Marktplaats have been a major focus, so we provided a UX research team for the ongoing work. The aim of the team was to conduct, scale and promote the role of research within the company.
By organising a new concept called 'Customer Tuesdays', the team could present their findings and demonstrate the value of research. By creating workflows and easy-to-replicate processes for conducting research, we also enabled the research team to focus more on strategy. All by working in a fast-paced agile way, with exploration, design, and implementation cycles.
We played a key role in the way Marktplaats looks and feels. We created illustrations for their app, for the onboarding flow on the buyer side to welcome them into the marketplace, as well as created animations, how-to videos and visuals for marketing campaigns.
During a visual design challenge we held with Marktplaats, we created a tailored illustration style and a complete animation track. This added a great deal of value to the company because it gave Marktplaats a relatable identity, as well as a platform on which to communicate tips and tricks on how to advertise on the site, and communicate Marktplaats information to clients.
Strategy
Implementing strategy has been paramount to achieving the sort of design success Marktplaats have envisaged. Our role within this is to define the user journey from the seller point of view, validate ideas and propositions via prototypes, amongst others.
Continuous UX support
To fill any skill-set gaps and support the ongoing improvement and iteration of the product, we offer Marktplaats ongoing UX support. Both in the form of long- and short-term contracts for talent integrated in their design team.
Stakeholder collaboration
We provide a stakeholder manager role to manage, communicate and collaborate with anyone on the team that has a say in how the product looks and works. This keeps the company aligned on all design efforts.
