Vendr

Marketplace

Overview

Vendr is a platform for companies to find, buy, renew, and manage SaaS. With Vendr Marketplace, anyone can browse or search for a SaaS product and request a private offer. Through Vendr, the user then receives a free quote for their SaaS purchase, skipping the hassle and time taken to talk to sales. Our SaaS consultants’ expertise and Vendr’s historical pricing data also ensure users get the best price.

We had previously launched a barebones version of Marketplace to Vendr account holders, who could access Marketplace by logging in. This project launched Marketplace as a public eCommerce site in 6 weeks, with the KPI of private offers submitted. This was a crucial launch for the company, since our longterm company goal is for Marketplace to become the primary source of revenue for Vendr.

My role

I was the sole designer on this extensive project. I worked with 2 PMs, 2 researchers, and my engineering team. I also worked with marketing.

Problem & Goals

There were many pieces to solve for with this launch. Here are the top 3 highlights:

1. Supplier listing pages: For each listing page, we needed to maximize the add-to-cart rate. For Vendr, the add-to-cart (ATC) action is submitting a private offer request.

2. Navigation: How should users be able to navigate between Marketplace and the existing platform?

3. Vendr.com homepage: We want Marketplace to be the focus of Vendr’s homepage, since we’re betting that it will be Vendr’s primary source of revenue.

Solution Overview

• Supplier listing pages: I added content educating the user on how Vendr works and building trust. I also worked with Marketing to ensure my designs accounted for SEO goals.

• Navigation: Users would navigate between the two sides of Vendr via the top navigation. We hypothesized the two sides would be used by different personas.

• Vendr.com homepage: I revamped the homepage to allow users to immediately search for the product they want to buy. I also included content to educate the user on how Vendr works.

The Design Process

Goals

The overall goal was to launch and learn quickly.

1. Launch Marketplace publicly within 6 weeks, with the main KPI of private offers requested.

2. More importantly, learn from this launch. With Vendr Marketplace being a solution that’s new to the industry, we needed to begin finding product-market fit.

1. Supplier listing pages

For each listing page, we needed to maximize the rate of users submitting a private offer request.

Because the existing form at the top of the page was already working well and we had very limited engineering capacity, I focused on improving the content underneath the form. I worked with my researchers to rapidly iterate on content around building trust with the user, such as the FAQ, SaaS consultant bios, and customer testimonials. I also worked with Marketing on including SEO requirements, and finding and selecting customer testimonials.

2. Navigation

Users would navigate between the Marketplace and Platform sides of Vendr via the top navigation. We hypothesized the two sides would be used by different personas.

With this hypothesis, I came up with multiple options. I needed to design a solution that worked with our new business and UX needs, but wouldn’t disrupt the workflows of existing customers using our Platform.

I started with low fidelity wireframes to keep the conversation focused. I created a thorough prototype for each navigation option, and listed pros and cons of each to help us make a decision.

3. Vendr.com homepage

We wanted Marketplace to be the focus of Vendr’s homepage, since we we’re betting that it will be Vendr’s primary source of revenue.

During this phase of the project, time was running out, and I needed to finalize the homepage designs in less than a week. Luckily, I was working with a few learnings from prior research:

1. In a previous Vendr experiment, customers responded positively to seeing familiar logos of products they could buy through Vendr — it increased their trust. Thus, I knew that putting a focus on product logos was important.

2. A theme from the supplier listing page research was that customers needed to be educated on how Vendr works, since we’re a new solution in the industry. So, that educational content was high priority in my explorations.

I quickly narrowed down on one iteration through internal feedback. Then, we ran both moderated and unmoderated tests, which had positive results.

Final mockups

In summary, I owned designs for all parts of Vendr’s public launch of Marketplace. This included allowing users to navigate between Marketplace and Platform and increasing users’ trust in Vendr, ultimately leading to more private offer requests submitted.

Results (so far)

One week post-launch, we’ve already achieved a 4% add-to-cart rate*, with 33% being monetizable. To put that in perspective, Shopify stores on average maintain an ATC rate of 4%. Achieving that only 1 week post-launch, without a full marketing push (yet), is really exciting!

*Again, the add-to-cart action for Vendr is submitting a private offer

Next steps

As mentioned earlier, one goal of this launch was to learn about how to achieve product-market fit. With the feedback from this launch, we realized we need to refine:

1. Providing value in all steps of the SaaS buyer journey

2. Of course, increasing conversation rate

I’m happy to chat about the designs I am already working on for these next steps!