
User Research
To gauge the brand perception of ZEFO among existing users.

ZEFO
Zefo is an early stage eCommerce startup committed to giving buyers and sellers an absolute hassle free used goods shopping experience. The vision behind GoZEFO is to ensure the most convenient and Zero Effort experience while trying to buy and sell.
GoZefo was founded in 2015 at Bangalore and since then it has raised a total of $19 million in funding over 4 rounds.
Why User research?
Zefo has an extensive customer base so they decided to leverage that and study the users to gather the following information.
By analyzing the gathered information, the brand can identify the problem areas faced by the user and work towards it.
01
Customer Demographics data - Age, Occupation, Income etc.
02
Perceptions about Zefo as a brand used goods - Second-hand market and the offered value props.
03
What kind of Return of Investment (ROI) we can expect from the UX efforts that the company is putting.
04
What truly matters to your users.
Process

1. Defining Users
It was very important to define the users to get relevant responses. We categorized the users based on the intent and product usage.
High Intent
High Intent User
Did not Buy or Use
High Intent User
Bought or Used
We Focused on these two categories for maximum impact
Low Intent User
Did not Buy or Use
Low Intent User
Bought or Used
Used ZEFO's Products
How we got high intent users?
In this case of e-commerce website which is selling second-hand products online, we employed the following methods to establish a touchpoint with the users.
Forms on website
Offline Stores
Customer Support Queries
Visiting User's home during delivery
People who wishlisted
Drop carts
TARGETS
We Defined which customers we want to contact and how many quantitative and qualitative responses we are targeting. Following are some figures.
2000
Online Surveys
40
50%
50%
Qualitative Interviews
Current user base
Prospective users
2. Finding Medium
We tried the following mediums for conducting the User research and they were evaluated against budget and effectiveness of the employed method. One more thing to be considered was the constraints dues to a small team.

Face to Face Interview
Telephonic Interview
Online Surveys
Effectiveness
Budget
We had to figure out the budget and goals to follow the best medium
Key Findings
01
Do a pilot run to test all the mediums and identify the most effective one out of all.
02
Always ask for the appointment before; to make the user more focused and comfortable while answering.
03
The time of sending the survey emailer is critical for getting user responses: For eg. 10 am worked for us.
Final Method
We sent a 1st part of the questionnaire which contained quantitaive closed-ended questions and at the end of that questionnaire, we gave a small reward in the terms of shopping voucher. In that section, we included that if you want to be the part of the more detailed user study please select a suitable time to call with an option to select.
Demographic Covered
Age
Employment Type
Gender
City
Income
Residence Type
Education

3. Formulating Questions
The quality of the responses we got was dependent on two major things: what question you asked and how you asked those questions.
What questions we ask?
We divided the question set into two parts.
A. Demographics
B. Intent specific
In our case, we defined the following Question Groups (QG's)
1. Internet Usage patterns
2. Broader E-commerce perception
3. User environment while purchases/browsing.
4. Seconds Market Perception
5. Zefo's Brand Perception.
How we ask the Questions?
We worked on refining the questions and also the approach of asking the questions.
A. Refining
1. Divide the questions into subjective and objective response types.
2. Select medium for each type.
3. Test on real audience and update.
B. Language
1. Don't ask leading questions.
2. Break down questions.

Formulate questions

Test on Users

Keep Modifying
Some Suggestions
1. Keep on removing the questions when you think that you are getting skewed responses.
2. Always ask 'WHY' instead of 'WHY NOT'
4. Analyzing Data
It is very important to make sense of the quantitative and qualitative data collected through interviews. It required the involvement of the design team, marketing team and the leadership of the organization to derive inferences from the present raw data.
# Step 1
We started by creating the analysis groups based on the question groups that were created during the process of formulating questions for the interview.
Question Groups (QG's)
Internet/ Device usage pattern
Broader E-commerce Perception
User Environment while making the purchase/browsing
Seconds market perception
ZEFO's Brand Perception
Analysis Groups (AG's)
Online/Offline Comparision and Inhibitions in buying process
Second Hand Perception
Brand Perceptions and Value props feedbacks
# Step 2
Next, we created the table of Analysis group and Demographics.
Demographics_1
Demographics_2
AG_1
Insights will come here.
AG_2
We plotted demographics based on Age group and income.
# Step 3
Then, we started listening to the recordings from the conducted interviews and noted the interesting and critical points mentioned by the users during the interview on a sticky note and posted on the above-created grid.
The data mentioned had, who said that and about what.


It is advisable to keep taking note during the interview even if you have recordings.
5. Final Insights
50%
People don't prefer buying mobile and electronics online
70%
People check reviews on Flipkart/Amazon before buying electronics on ZEFO
60%
Customers still feel ZEFO is furniture selling company
70%
Interestingly, don't prefer buying second hand appliance
70%
Delay purchase because they were waiting for discounts.
50%
People browse on mobile and place order on laptop
Never Assume
The assumptions tested through the study helped us in formulating the actionable.
What we assumed
-
Discount or Coupons helps users to purchase faster
-
People prefer second-hand appliances over second-hand furniture.
-
Buying in ZEFO is a singular flow.
-
80% of the traffic is from mobile. Major orders come from the mobile site.
What we found
-
40% of the users delayed there purchase because they were waiting for the sale/discounts.
-
70% of the users do not prefer buying second-hand appliances as they don't trust functionality whereas for furniture it is only 25%.
-
65% of the users go to Flipkart/Amazon to check more product details and reviews before buying from ZEFO.
-
60% of people prefer laptops to place orders.
List Goes on...
Actionable
We gathered a lot of insights through the study and we also dug deep to find out patterns/concerns/reasons related to these insights.
This helped us in solving and introducing new features on the website for better user experience.
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