Helping AliExpress build trust and clarity

Hmm?

As a user of Chinese-based eCommerce platform Aliexpress.com for finding cheaper alternatives, I've always wondered why this website isn't commonly used in the US when it can find similar products at a fraction of the cost on Amazon.

Challenge

To improve user retention of AliExpress users and analyze where its UI/UX can be improved.

Empathize

Website Research

Launched in 2010, AliExpress is a eCommerce platform dedicated to B2B, B2C, C2C international selling. It does not sell products directly to consumers and most of its retailers are Chinese. This platform offers a variety of goods and its prices are lower than other popular US eCommerce sites.

It serves to "make it easy to do business anywhere" and offer shoppers everywhere more options by transforming the international marketplace.

LEMERS Method

I first used the LEMERS method to learn more about AliExpress and its competitors. I collected information from 20 participants from friends, family, and students.

AliExpress performed lower in everything except for efficiency than its US counterparts with a 1/4 in Satisfaction. I wanted to focus on learnability (to find out what is frustrating and not retaining first time users) and satisfaction (to find out what user needs are not satisfied) so I performed contextual inquiry to jotted down some insights:

User Interviews

With early insights, I went ahead to conduct interviews of new and existing users. I had users explore the website and buy something. My goal from the interview was to:

  1. Determine crucial information that funnels to a successful purchase
  2. Determine how improve the satisfication of looking for information
  3. Learn about shopper attitude of the homepage

I analyzed and compiled the structured interviews. It's also important to note that some new users were not inclined to create profiles or login with their social media in order to save coupons dedicated for new users.

Define

Personas

After user interviews, I created some personas to highlight specific goals and problems to see how I can help them increase satisfication in performing certain tasks.

Pain Points

After conducting different forms of user research, I categorized the main issues that needed addressing into these 3 categories.

Ideate

Features

From the user research I can see that there are definitely general UI improvements to be made, however Aliexpress is losing trust as users are not able to find the correct information and reviews that they want to see.

Currently, the reviews system does include adequate information, but I think that adding these features could show the users the reviews and information that they want to see to gain their trust and increase sales.

  1. Shipping speed
  2. Pictures grid
  3. Sort reviews by home country
  4. Sort reviews by helpfulness vs recent
  5. Q&A Section

However, Users can now quickly see all the bad reviews, janky product pictures, and the slow shippers. Is this bad? In considering the trade-offs, I believe that long term this addition would bring lasting benefits

In growing the review system, I also considered that many users will not just want to spend more time and effort putting in more review information. They needed to be incentivized through coupons:

Prototype

Lo-fi

I targetted the main, search, item, review screens for redesign. I focused on having an informative review system that incentivizes users to contribute:

User Opinions

I asked for some opinions on the structure and improvements of the redesign to collect opinion for iterating:

  1. With the less gridded view, I could introduct a quick view for more saving the item and to provide more info
  2. Optimize white space in list form for search screen
  3. Avoid clutter in details and ensure that review is intuitive and easy to use
  4. Don't overload users with reviews and show progress/location

Design

Hi-fi