Creating the private listing creation flow.

Problem

Sellers don't know where to go to get the best value for their car and all the options and resources available for them to offload their car. 7 out of 10 shoppers plan to sell their car, which gives Cars.com the opportunity to increase its sell inventory dramatically.

Solution

Create a product that will enable consumers to create listings with the least amount of data entry that still allows for the car to be listed on Cars.com as a classified ad. Internally, the product was called Peer to Peer (P2P).

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Summary of what I did

Discovery and Research

Continuous Discovery Habits

Workshop group consisted of:
Michael Y. (Sr. Director, Product) · Danny K. (Product Manager) · Joanne R. (Sr Manager of Product Design) · Marc L. (Product Designer) · Michael C. (Software Engineering Manager) · Joe H. (Software Engineer)

6-week workshop by Teresa Torres

Defining Outcomes

User Interviews

Mapping the Opportunity Space

Ideation

Story Mapping

Assumption Mapping

Low Fidelity Mockups

Resources used to guide the creation of the mockups:
Discovery sessions results · Competitive analysis · Feedback from internal mockup presentation/working sessions

4 moderated interviews and a survey sent to 125 Cars.com consumers.

User Research

With the help of the research team, we ran moderated interviews with 2 primary goals:

1. Find out where in the flow to perform user authentication.
2. Get early user feedback on each screen.

Flow 1: Full login upfront

Flow 2: Email address soft login

Flow 3: Continue as guest

Results

Nearly three-quarters (73%) of users said they'd expect to be required to sign up for an account BEFORE creating their listing.

When provided the choice, 61.3% of users still said they'd choose to sign up before creating their listing.

Most users wanted to determine many things before making a car listing. Most important was determining any associated costs, steps/summary listing process, and suggested value of their car.

Estimated Value: Providing any pricing information too early may turn away some users before finishing a listing, let alone converting.

Adding photos: Great start but can be improved. Experienced users suggested providing static photos in addition to the image recommendations. Most users expect guidelines to have photo limits, file type restrictions, and other technical parameters.

Location: Most users pointed out that they never clarified where they were located — this was important for not only understanding how pricing was determined but where they would be fielding potential buyers from.

Listing flow steps: Most users wanted an understanding of where they are at in relation to the entire car-listing creation process.

High Fidelity Mockups

Key highlights:
Compliance with Cars' design system, Spark. Provided engineers and validated accessibility criteria.

Responsive Web: Mobile

Responsive Web: Desktop

Soft Launch

On February 2022, the P2P product was launched to 1% of Cars.com's users.

User Feedback

We did another round of user interviews to get feedback. I moderated five 30-minute user interview sessions. The users came from Cars.com consumer panel.

What went well:

• Users easily figured out where to put their VIN or license plate number to start the listing.
• Users easily figured out the next button to go from one step to the next.
• Some users were able to accurately guess what the next step would be.
• Most of the users are familiar with the information we were asking for.
• The users found the whole listing flow easy to understand and engage with.
• Users found the number of steps comfortable and weren't too long.

Improvements made or being planned:

• Copy on the Sell index page were revised to emphasize the benefits of selling with us including making it clear that listing is free.
• A/T and M/T are going to be spelled out: "Automatic" and "Manual".
• Exploring revising the submit screen to directly go to Your Garage.
• Will be exploring more usability testing on how users get back to their "garage" to complete their listing.

Product Launch

The product was 100% launched on March 31, 2022.

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In less than a month, there were 7,945 private car listings in our marketplace. Currently, 400–500 new car listings are created daily. (Updated January 18, 2023)

Native Mobile App

After launch, we continued to improve the product, released a renewal flow, FAQ page, and Your Garage improvements. We also worked on the mobile apps version of the product, both iOS and Android. These versions successfully launched in Q4 of 2022.