Redesigning Craigslist
Screenshot of the Landing Page of actual Craigslist website.
Overview
To an overwhelmed eye, the Craigslist website looks like this:
Therefore, as part of this case study, the above look of Craigslist was changed, as visualized through low-fidelity wireframes shown below:
To This
From This
Redesigned Low-Fidelity Wireframe of Craigslist.
Low-Fidelity Wireframe of the actual Craigslist website, as derived from wirify.com
Craigslist is a hugely popular and useful website, which has also been making significant profit, in spite of the website largely remaining free. However, it still has an archaic, 90-s look, that could be overwhelming for the user.
Therefore, this case study started from understanding business needs and user needs, and then updated the Information Architecture of the website based on certain research tools accordingly, to build low-fidelity wireframes emanating from those research.
The research tools used in this project came from the standpoint of deploying the user's point of view, in building a website that benefits them as well as the business, without going too far out from the business goals.
Project Specifics:
Timeline: 5 weeks
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Time period: November - December, 2021
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Team: 4 persons
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My Role: Team leader, completed and did research, built wireframes.
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Tools used: Microsoft Excel, Optimal Workshop, Adobe XD, Balsamiq.
Was it required? What was the process? How did I decide on this process?
Read below to find out.
Problem Statement
The challenge was how to fix something that is not broken, and instead build something that has evolved directly from user's point of view.
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The User Interface of Craigslist has an old website look, with little navigation present to the user in choosing to go to particular directions. Too many choices abound.
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The website also lacks what's familiar to the average user nowadays.
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It's not an intuitive design for the user, and by presenting too many choices on the landing page, the user could not only get overwhelmed with a cluttered UI and too many choices, the user would also waste time in trying to figure out where to find what the user is looking for.
Goal
The goal of this research project was to better redesign Craigslist, derived directly from user experience, aligning business goals with user goals.
The chief intentions were that users should be able to navigate better, find information better, have an UI that feels less overwhelming, and have a familiar looking website, in accordance with Hick's Law and Jakob's Law.
Redesign Process
Processes
Discover Needs
Evaluate & Analyze
Understanding
Business & User
Goals
Gap Analysis & Tree Testing
Synthesize from Analysis
Card Sorting
Refine, Validate & Design
Develop Sitemap, Navigation Processes & Organization Structures
Design
Wireframes
Actions
Understanding Business Goals and User Goals
Understanding Business Goals
Originally a San Francisco based community electronic newsletter, craigslist now hosts classified ads for more than 450 cities worldwide. The business model is based on a P2P (peer-to-peer) or A2P (Agency-to-peer) or A2A (agency-to-agency) model.
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Craigslist is a $ 3 billion company, even though they do not charge any fees for posting, except in very few select categories.
(https://mgtblog.com/how-does-craigslist-make-money/)
Craigslist's goals are to:
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Host a plethora of ads for products and services,
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Provide a safe, helpful and scam-free way to connect users while buying & selling things, AND,
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Create a superior and reliable user experience, through easy navigation, and thereby creating a loyal user base.
The maker of Craigslist, Craig Newmark had said that he had built the website to help people, to "give back" and wanted to focus on something simple and usable. Craigslist was launched in 1995, and the User Interface have had no development from then. Browsing habits have changed since the proliferation of dotcom era businesses in the 90s, and this does have an effect on the user experience.
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Although the business has grown in assets, the popularity of the Craigslist website has diminished for a bit, to better designed businesses like eBay and its site kijiji, for example.
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Having a better designed website is good for any business.
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Understanding User Goals & Needs
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Users want to have a easy-to-understand, easily navigable, safe and reliable website to access transaction of affordable things and services, and get these done with an efficient investment of time.
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Aligning Business Needs with User Needs: User Personas
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Building user personas were the first very crucial step to empathize and find alignment of user goals with business goals.
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All of the analyses to define gaps in goals and ideate the next steps came from the standpoint of users.
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User Personas
User Personas were drawn from two extremes of probable users:
1) One who is digitally savvy, is young, is busy, wants to buy things in a jiffy, and is on a budget.
2) Second persona is someone who is old, is not that digitally savvy, is looking for downsizing and has several things to sell. Safe interaction is a priority for both kinds of persona.
Research Tools & Analyses
Gap Analysis
To identify missing points & explore whether there are any gaps in the information Craigslist offers and its business intentions.
Key Takeaways
Users struggle to navigate the site due to:
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Lack of clear labels.
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Lack of visual hierarchy.
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Unfamiliarity with a task.
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Lack of knowledge regarding safety practices.
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Lack of any organization principles.
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There's a gap between business intentions and delivery of information.
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The NPS score was --25.
iterative tree tests
Two iterative Tree Tests were done to determine how users find information in a website and where and how they get lost.
Key Takeaways
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Users take a lot of time when the task is unfamiliar to them.
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Users take a lot of time when the task is not nested at relevant sections.
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Users might take a bit more time in their endeavor of completing a given task, even if the task could appear confusing.
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Better labels lead to better information scents, leading to less abandonment of tasks.
card sorting, sitemap & navigation
Card sorting helped to delineate mental models of information, which were deployed to form an initial sitemap.
Key Takeaways
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Users mapped tasks based on interactions, such as:
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Actions taken by self,
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Actions by others,
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Reactions to actions by others.
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Similar tasks are expected to be chunked together with very clear labels.
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Contrary to business intentions, users don't deem certain categories to be important enough to elicit their own categories.
Navigation to Wireframes
Labels, Navigation Systems and Organization Structures were drawn from research, which helped in developing low-fidelity wireframes. The mental models of research participants were significantly insightful to group tasks together, in developing the labeling system, which helped in drawing up the initial sitemap, from which low-fidelity wireframes were drawn as follows:
Home Page
Web
Mobile
Secondary Page
Web
Mobile
Secondary Page 2
Web
Mobile
Impact: Matching Outcomes with Needs
clarity for easy navigation
Visual Hierarchy, Organization Structure and updated navigation systems added a guided, intentional format for the user to navigate the site, telling the user at the outset what they can do in the website, and what are their available choices, making it easy to interact with the website.
LEARNABILITY FOR RELIABILITY AND SAFE BROWSING
Since the sitemap was deduced directly from the user’s mental models, their labeling system, and was aligned with the business goals of Craigslist website, it provides users the much needed familiarity, good information scent and textual cues suggestive of the content. Consequently, this would require much less time investment to navigate the website. Users tend to return to websites/apps when they have a satisfactory experience, forming a loyal base for businesses, and therefore the popularity and acceptability of Craigslist might be even more enhanced.
​EFFICIENCY FOR SMART TIME INVESTMENT
The new wireframes are designed not to clutter or overwhelm the user's mind, but help them make easy decisions based on small, meaningful chunks of information, offering commonly used items (such as messaging the seller, checking safety practices, flagging a posting -- things which were not easy to access before) easy to spot and access.
Future Research Implications/Next Steps
Creating high fidelity wireframes and doing usability tests on those would determine whether user needs are met to satisfactory levels, as well as point towards what pain points might still remain, and take further iterative steps to reduce those pain points.