eTAIL

eTAIL

Marketplace service company,
helping brands with their online growth.
(Previously named Diatly)

Marketplace service company,
helping brands with their online growth.
(Previously named Diatly)

ROLES

Designer

Part-time PO

Front-End Integrator

ROLES

Designer, Part-time PO and Front-End Integrator

TEAM

1 CTO (France)

1 PO (France)
10 developpers (India)

TEAM

1 CTO(France), 1 PO (France) & 10 developpers (India)

TEAM

1 CTO (France)
1 PO (France)
10 developpers (India)

STACK
Figma/Sketch
AngularJS & Bootstrap
.Net

STACK
Figma/Sketch, AngularJS & Bootstrap, .Net

STACK
Figma/Sketch
AngularJS & Bootstrap
.Net

Selling on marketplace is hard

Selling on marketplace is hard

The biggest difficulty for brands is the growing number of marketplaces and their individual systems (the biggest and oldest marketplaces usually implement their own).

The biggest difficulty for brands is the growing number of marketplaces and their individual systems (the biggest and oldest marketplaces usually implement their own).

Third parties like eTAIL saw this opportunity to help brands distribute their products online by providing tools and services to help them grow on this complex marketplace ecosystem.

Third parties like eTAIL saw this opportunity to help brands distribute their products online by providing tools and services to help them grow on this complex marketplace ecosystem.

Users from 3 sides

Users from 3 sides

Providing tools and services for a company like eTAIL means dealing with 3 types of users:

  • internal users (account managers, sales, accounting, support)

  • brand users (direct clients)

  • marketplace users (partners/clients)

Providing tools and services for a company like eTAIL means dealing with 3 types of users:

  • internal users (account managers, sales, accounting, support)

  • brand users (direct clients)

  • marketplace users (partners/clients)

Each of them had access to a specific interface with dedicated features and tools.

Each of them had access to a specific interface with dedicated features and tools.

Having such a wide range of users means a lot of adaptation during the phases of discovery and delivery. Information was gathered in different ways:

Having such a wide range of users means a lot of adaptation during the phases of discovery and delivery. Information was gathered in different ways:

  • By collecting data from tools and the database.
    As the company services involve products and feeds, we could see what was done in the database by the users and how. By analysing these actions and comparing it with our expectations, we had a first idea of their experience.

  • By getting feedback, mostly and directly from the brands.
    Communicating and developing a relationship with the brands was an essential part of the experience we were providing. We were open for exchanges by phone, mail, messages or through the interface and welcomed contact at any time, for any feedback or question.

  • By testing and iterating, again and again.
    The key to our success was the fact we were delivered good products that met the expectations of the users. Brands were willing to test new features and provide feedback, and internal users were always avaible to iterate and make their task faster and easier. This preliminary user testing allowed us to improve the tools and user experience before releasing them to all of the users.

  • By collecting data from tools and the database.
    As the company services involve products and feeds, we could see what was done in the database by the users and how. By analysing these actions and comparing it with our expectations, we had a first idea of their experience.

  • By getting feedback, mostly and directly from the brands.
    Communicating and developing a relationship with the brands was an essential part of the experience we were providing. We were open for exchanges by phone, mail, messages or through the interface and welcomed contact at any time, for any feedback or question.

  • By testing and iterating, again and again.
    The key to our success was the fact we were delivered good products that met the expectations of the users. Brands were willing to test new features and provide feedback, and internal users were always avaible to iterate and make their task faster and easier. This preliminary user testing allowed us to improve the tools and user experience before releasing them to all of the users.

Working with the internal team

Working with the internal team

Daily operations are run by a team of account managers, daily checking the feeds and the reports of their brands:

  • To insure everything is running smoothly

  • To highlight any issues as soon as they occur

Daily operations are run by a team of account managers, daily checking the feeds and the reports of their brands:

  • To insure everything is running smoothly

  • To highlight any issues as soon as they occur

For the team to work efficiently, we had to implement a range of tools with specific features to help them in their routine work, with the flexibility to adapt to some exceptional situations.

For the team to work efficiently, we had to implement a range of tools with specific features to help them in their routine work, with the flexibility to adapt to some exceptional situations.

EXAMPLE OF FEATURE

Alert on blocked orders

Alert on blocked orders

When an order is placed on a marketplace, it is sent to the brand via a funnel with several steps. The order may be stuck in any of these steps. In this case, the brand will not be able to ship the order correctly, or at all.

Even a seemingly small error by the buyer can create an issue (e.g. an impossible post-code, but yet accepted by the marketplace interface, can be refused by the brand system receiving their orders).

One of our major pain points was that the brands were noticing problems with their orders before we were, which is not a good client experience.

We visualized the complete funnel with the support team and the developpers, and designed a solution where the team is pro-active and can resolve any issue without the brand even noticing.

We had several key points:

We had several key points:

Display the blocked orders by time, the oldest ones are the most important

Display the blocked orders by time, the oldest ones are the most important

Add shortcut to quickly fix the issue: most of the time, the problem can be solved in under 2 minutes if the support agent has the ability to edit the information

Add shortcut to quickly fix the issue: most of the time, the problem can be solved in under 2 minutes if the support agent has the ability to edit the information

Identify and automate the issues that are occurring often and that can be fixed by updating our systems

Identify and automate the issues that are occurring often and that can be fixed by updating our systems

After deployment :

After deployment :

The number of orders blocked longer than 24 hours dropped by more than 90%.

The number of orders blocked longer than 24 hours dropped by more than 90%.

The team became proactive and could resolve the issue or alert brands to find the best solution quickly, with minimum disruption for the buyers

The team became proactive and could resolve the issue or alert brands to find the best solution quickly, with minimum disruption for the buyers

Working with brand clients

Working with brand clients

The clients of eTAIL were brands selling a range of goods online: from clothes to beer, from pet food to gym equipment.

Initially started as a SaaS, the company provided a tool for brands to be fully autonomous.
But as larger clients were onboarded, the company had to shift to provide services dedicated to brands.

Working with these type of clients meant dealing with different levels of expectations and mostly different requirements. Brands were divided in 2 categories:

  • Brands using their own system but requiring some dedicated feeds of data to operate their marketplace distribution.

    The work with these brands was more technical (PO) than design based. These clients did not have a dedicated interface but the work was instead done by the account managers in the dedicated back office (process described above).

  • Brands using the interface developed by eTAIL, providing tools and information about their marketplace distribution.

The majority of brands used the interface made by eTAIL. Their relationship was very strong with the design and product team. The features provided by the tool were adapted to each marketplace, and even sometimes unique in the ecosystem.

Open communication with brands created an efficient feedback loop that allowed for new requests to be continually submitted for analysis. Bugs could be quickly fixed and larger requests were carefully considered for the roadmap.

This was not just good client service and user experience, but also a way to align and refine our product development.

Designing in this environment meant understanding the needs, communicating effectively, iterating fast and testing fully to deliver new features within acceptable timelines.

EXAMPLE OF feature

Testing with brands on Shipping orders

Testing with brands on Shipping orders

With time and effort, some small brands started to sell a lot of products once they were integrated in marketplaces. They were used to sending a few orders per week but were then faced with a much higher output.

A fully automated solution was one of the services provided by eTAIL but it did not fit the budget of most smalls brands. On the other hand, managing shipping manually on the original interface was very time consuming, especially during seasonal sales like Christmas or BlackFriday. A client selling well could spend a day just to update the shipping details.

The small brands represented a large percentage of clients, so an efficient solution had to be found to help them expedite the process.

Following discussions with clients and the technical team, the chosen solution was to create a download/upload file system. It should:

  • Allow the brand to download an orders file with all the orders waiting to be treated

  • Allow the brand to upload that same file with the shipping details included and update the orders all at once on our system

An existing internal tool was already in use by the client support team and could help us simulate the final tool. It was natural to actively involve them in the initial analysis phase with the clients.

A few brands with different shipping carriers were selected and a process was set: the team would send the file to the brand, they would fill it with the shipping details and the team would upload it to update the orders.

Several points came out of this first phase:

Several points came out of this first phase:

There were no alerts if orders had issues.

The update was blocked as soon as an issue was found in the upload file.

Some carriers had very specific fields that were not included in the file.

Based on these results, we worked with the clients to build a more user friendly version of the tool on the brand interface.

We agreed on the final solution with:

Clear visual cues and information when orders had issues. Following an upload, the interface instantly alerted the user if some orders had issues. A file with the necessary information was also generated.

No more blocked updates. If there were errors on the file, they were skipped and the rest of the orders could still be treated.

Extra options were added to fit the data requirements of specific carriers.

Brands with this tool saved a lot of time. Updating the orders became 5 to 10 times faster than before, depending on the carrier.

This new file system even created new possibilities and scenarios as the tool continued to evolve with time, giving brands a better overall experience.

Jeremy Neveu

designer