Curtsy

| A place for selling women's fashion

Users upload approximately +700 new items through Curtsy’s iOS app every week. However, data shows that only about 10% of users successfully complete a posting. Since Curtsy charges a fee per item sold in the app, optimizing the uploading and selling process on their iOS app is critical to the business model.

Objectives

—Improve the item upload flow experience on iOS
—Provide guidance for creating quality postings
—Encourage users to upload more photos

Role

As a contract designer, I worked on this project end-to-end with a team of other designers. During an 8-week period, we conducted +15 user interviews with multiple rounds of testing. I developed and refined high-fidelity wireframes for making the clickable prototypes used for testing.

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Optimizing the upload flow

Initially, we wanted to test a page-by-page approach where users would move directly from each question to the next. However, we ultimately decided to use the parent/child screen format because it allowed users to see their progress and edit their posting as they go along.

Parent Screen

Providing more transparency within the parent screen allows users to easily digest the form as a whole. Reorganizing the fields into related groups with mandatory and optional fields clearly labeled allows users to prioritize required tasks to successfully make a posting.

Next we arranged the fields from least to most complex within each section for a more user-friendly flow. Relocating the CTA from text in the upper right hand corner to a bold button at the bottom of the screen orients users to the task at hand.

Clarifying form fields

Users were confused by the flow of the questions during this section of the posting. We realized that these fields were grouped together because they impacted the final price, but users weren't given enough information to complete the fields.

"Why is shipping located under the price tab?
—Lauren | 23 | young professional

Child Screens

After combining the related fields on the parent screen, we moved the questions to two separate child screens. This enabled us to provide users more context and information to fill out the respective fields.

Providing feedback

We found opportunities to give users feedback during the upload flow in the parent screen. By including temporary tooltips, we could guide users at strategic points in the flow.

Success States vs. Error States

Introducing success states provides positive reinforcement that motivates users to continue the upload process. Error states alert users to issues that might prevent users from successfully completing a posting when users try to submit an incomplete post.

Selecting Photos

Data shows that users typically take photos of the items they plan on uploading beforehand and upload an average of 2.3 photos per posting. Currently, the photo tips only appears at the beginning of the posting process, but is not accessible afterwards.

Postings with an average of 2.7 photos sell faster.

By creating a permanent tooltip on the camera roll screen, users are incentivized to upload 3 or more photos to each posting and can also access additional information within the tooltip. Including the row of thumbnails creates a smoother transition between the parent screen and camera roll screen.

68% of users complete multiple posts within a 24-hour period.

NEW USERS VS. POWER USERS

During our interviews, we found that power users don’t want to navigate through the tips every time they post an item. Moving the tips to another page with examples of ideal pictures right beneath provides useful context for new users without impeding power users.

Final thoughts

Our recommendations were well received by the Curtsy; they are currently working on implementing some of our designs and hopefully we'll be able to see some of changes within the coming weeks ahead.

In hindsight, we found that users typically skipped over the optional input fields, which could potentially affect the overall quality of the postings. Introducing a push notifications for users to fill out the optional fields for items that haven't sold after a set period of time could address this issue.