Overview
Award winning B2B platform, that helps small businesses become digitized easily, so they can have an online presence and thrive during COVID-19. B7 Marketplace is the winning project of the B7 Open Data Hackathon 2020 of Be'er Sheva municipality. As a first aid for small local businesses to overcome the economical difficulties that were caused due to COVID-19. This app helps small business to open and manage their first e-commerce store easily, without the need to have any special technical knowledge.
B7 Marketplace | B2B store app
While there are many companies and freelancers who will create e-commerce websites for the right price, there are also fantastic free websites, such as Wix, that offer a free platform for a website creating, but for that you need two things: a Computer and Technical knowledge, at some point level. These services exist for a while, but many still doesn't use them, even in critical times such as a world wide pandemic. This competitive research helped us understand what is missed that needs to be solve. Since this product was co-developed with Wix team members, we knew a free and a friendly user experience platform doesn't meet our users' needs and aren't enough in this particular case. Even though the existing services have many advantages and helped many businesses to overcome Covid-19 struggles, we found these services didn't fit the specific needs and technical knowledge of our current users, since it askes user to create their own website at some point and the continues work with it isn't .
Market research
In order to survive the Covid-19 crisis, to protect themselves and their employees from the virus and serve customers facing mobility restrictions, businesses had to shift to a digital environment. With Customers moving online in reaction to COVID-19 restrictions, businesses had to launch new e-commerce site as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, due to lack of technical knowledge and budget, with no idea how this new "under-pandemic" world works, many small business in Be'er Sheva couldn't establish a fully functioning e-commerce website, nor digital presence, so their business were at risk.
The problem
UX interviews
USER RESEARCH
Since this product was created during a Hackathon, due to lack of time, we skipped the survey part and went straight to the interview, that was based on the hackathon brief, who summarized the extensive research about small businesses in Be'er Sheva. To get a deeper understanding about the well known problem, I conducted an interview with 6 participants that own small businesses in Be'er Shave.
The questions in these interviews were mainly about:
1. Their daily job routine
2. The main struggles they have to deal with due to COVID-19
3. How and if they manage to overcome Covid-19 challenges
4. Their technical skills and knowledge
5. If their business can become digitized
6. What's their business model and if they can shift it if needed
Personas
Based on the user research, I set up two personas with different goals and pain points, which I referred to throughout the whole design process. ​
1
Yossef, 64
The No-tech merchant
Since my technical skills are not that great, I haven't thought to shift my business to an online store, and when I did it was too late, cause I had no idea how and the needed budget.
Demographics
Age:
Location:
Job:
Education:
64
Be'er Sheva
Store owner
Matriculation Certificate
Tech
Internet:
Social media:
Online shopping:
Early adopter:
Bio
Goals
Yossef owns a store in Be'er Shava's old city for the past 34 years. When COVID-19 started, he was worried about his health and his financial state. Since he doesn't have any technical knowledge and orientation, he found himself in a difficult position, where he couldn't move to an e-commerce store and needed to shut down his business and to look for a job at a grocery shop.
-
Open an online store, with minimal costs
-
Getting exposure, so clients will know it exists
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Manage his online store with his existing knowledge and IT equipment
Pain points
-
Lack of technical skills and equipment
-
Lack of marketing skills
Use their mental models
Easy access
via smartphone app
Low maintenance platform
Pain points
Goals
STYLE GUIDE
Color palette
Tools
Figma
Illustrator
Photoshop
Financial struggles due to COVID-19, resulting in
low budget
Limited computer access due to the nature of their work
Lack of technical skills of managing an e-commerce website
MAIN FEATURES
1
Add new item
A convenient new way to add new item to the store's inventory, with the vendor's mobile phone. It uses his mental models from the stores logistics process, so it helps him learn use it intuitively.
2
Edit existing item
In any case the vendor wants to change any details about a specific item, such as number of units, he can do it here.
3
Inventory Management
The vendor can mange the store's inventory from his mobile phone, while the system notifies him about missing products and products that need to ordered ASAP. Each time the vendor adds new product, or when he has a new order to deliver, the system updates the inventory automaticlly.
