How to Improve the Overall Pre-purchase Experience Through a New Category Structure Based on a Compatible Database: Gittigidiyor (Ebay Turkey) Case

摘要

Customer journey mapping is a continuous process that demands end-to-end innovation through qualitative and quantitative user research. It helps to identify key points where service or communication breakdown is most likely and where they are mostly valued. Buyer journey mapping study of Gittigidiyor (Ebay Turkey) revealed the fact that the frequency of the repeat purchase was significantly limited although a high traffic and average visit time were observed. This finding pointed to the need to improve the pre-purchase experience in the web site towards motivating the users to visit more and inspiring them to buy more items. Relying on solid quantitative and qualitative research, this paper presents the action set taken for the realization of this goal. In this context the main action of the process is to renew the category structure through a focus on compatibility, which subsequently enabled the integration of a set of effective improvements. Firstly, this approach led to the improvement of a new listing creation process for the sellers by implementing an innovative and error-free experience. It also enabled to improve the search usability by presenting more relevant results, which was supported with a new smart auto suggestion feature in the search engine box and with smart compatibility filters in search results. The new compatible structure between vertical and horizontal categories brought the implementation of some persuasive features. It provided the increase in count of payment (COP) per item and average selling price (ASP) through cross-selling and up-selling features. Finally, the pre-purchase experience was supported by the integration of product rating/review mechanisms and targeted e-mailing based on previous purchase history of the customers.