Designing safer and easier ways to buy and sell
Gumtree Australia
Background
Gumtree, Australia’s marketplace, was interested in helping buyers and sellers connect in safer and more trusted ways.
In Australia, PayPal is held in particularly high esteem for both for its safety and convenience. Gumtree asked Pollen to explore the idea of introducing PayPal as a cashless method of payment into the platform.
I worked closely with the PayPal and Gumtree product teams to define a peer-to-peer payments system well suited to the local, face-to-face transactions of Gumtree.
User testing
To first attain the focus of the opportunity, we worked closely with the PayPal and Gumtree product teams to conduct concept validation sessions with buyers and sellers from the Gumtree platform.
At this stage, I was responsible for creating a set of user scenarios that demonstrated the ways in which Gumtree users might pay with PayPal. I prepared the script and testing plan for the moderator conducting each session.
I worked alongside Pollen’s senior art director, Hugo Vann, to develop a product vision and develop visuals that would be used during testing to demonstrate each scenario.
Stay local
User testing revealed that we needed to stay true to the local marketplace experience of Gumtree. With all existing transactions taking place being face-to-face and cash-in-hand, a mobile, peer-to-peer payments model was a good fit.
With this in mind, we designed a conversational UI that allowed sellers to accept payment from buyers through Gumtree’s existing messaging system.
Working with Adrian Wiggins, I developed an initial round of user flows, before creating high-fidelity wireframes that reflected Gumtree’s existing UI.
These high-fidelity flows were used to gain legal sign-off, however they also helped demonstrate how the experience would be integrated into the platform’s existing design system to Gumtree’s developers.
A new UI
With the project occurring concurrently with the new rebrand, the new P2P payments system underwent a new design treatment from Pollen’s Design Lead, Brett Walsh.
Launch
The Gumtree PayPal integration launched in both Canada and Australia in June 2017. The new system lets Gumtree users pay with PayPal across all platforms and devices - from iPhone to Android devices and the web.
You can now pay with PayPal on the Gumtree website, download the app for free on the App Store, or learn more about the Gumtree and PayPal partnership here.