FlipRide

FlipRide was founded on the idea that there had to be a better way to connect dealers with interested and committed sellers and buyers. In a market where inventory matters, access to high-quality vehicles is critical, and it helps users drive their business by finding the right vehicles for their specific needs.

My role
  • User research
  • Competitor research
  • User interviews
  • SME interviews
  • User flow diagrams
  • Wireframing
  • Prototyping
Platform(s)
  • Desktop
Location
  • Yerevan, Armenia
Year
  • 2022-2023

1. Discover

Digital presence is a crucial factor for many dealerships grounded by the increasing numbers of people who prefer online shopping experience to offline browsing. Having a well-optimized website with a clearly structured inventory and services is just as important for attracting and retaining customers.

Flipride is here with the mission to fill in the gap of the dealerships and customers interested in quick and reliable vehicle purchasing experience.

Key challenges

Even though we had a big base of analytical data available we also had an acute shortage of resources and very tight deadlines because of the need to do a really quick idea validation before diving deeper into the research and detailed planning stages. After a series of brainstorming sessions the team decided to go by rapid prototyping for the first round of product development.

SME expertise proved to be very insightful along our journey

We realized the risks of jump-starting the process with drafting the solution first yet we didn't simply rely on our hypotheses for that. The SME interviews still proved to answer some of the most important questions we needed to get answers for.

Further we were able to draft the main features and categories of the system.

Details of research

Method

Remote SME interviews

Interviewees

A Subject Matter Expert in car dealership industry with a vast experience in dealership consultancy sphere.

Sample questions asked

Because the platform needed to support several functional flows across dealership activities, it was important to identify the key pain points dealers faced and the issues that required consultancy-level support at different stages. Thus some of the key questions we were interested in were:

  • What are the main types of activities the dealers carry out daily and how do those activities look like?
  • How many tools do dealers typically use for their daily activities?
  • What are the main blockers and factors slowing down the dealership daily task accomplishment?
  • How important is the digital presence for the dealers and how much of their customer traffic comes from digital sources?

2. Define

Key takeaways

The results of the SME interviews helped us gather several key conclusions:

  • During the last years, especially after the dramatic change of customer behavior in e-commerce due to Covid 19 restrictions, the digital aspect has become increasingly important for businesses. Car dealerships are no exception and a decent digital presence is crucial for their success.
  • Dealerships have more than three different tools for inventory management, DMS synchronization, and purchases. A tool that would centralize these operations would be a great accelerator for them.
  • For those dealers who also have agents handling their vehicles it is also important to be able to track and analyze the data about each agent's activities.

Quantitative research data

Since the automotive industry is one of the most well-researched areas of e-commerce we had plenty of research data about customer behavior and quantitative research from a variety of sources. Some of the key findings that helped us draw the important business-related conclusions were:

  • Car buyers are spending less time car shopping, making decisions more quickly. The 68% of the surveyed consumers expected to do most of their research online, according to a Cox Automotive study, and 80% note that it is a good or great idea to buy entirely online.
  • Covid 19 shaped a different situation in commerce with the nearly 10% of cars having been sold online first six months of 2020, compared with just 1% of cars sold online during all of 2018.
  • 65% of auto purchasers expect more online options for purchasing a vehicle according to Google/Kantar.

Summing up the research data

Summing up all the data I created our statistical persona with the discovered needs and pain points.

Bob Davis persona photo

Bob Davis

Overview

Bob is a medium dealership owner. He has a moderately steady business running on offline local network.

Goal

Being able to sustain the existing client base and also attract new users meeting the competition of the technologically advanced competitors.

Pain points

He has an offline user base locally but his business has been losing the competitive edge during the recent years.

Location

Idaho, USA

Age

54

The statistical user persona of a dealer

Creating the necessary user flow diagrams

The platform was supposed to include several user levels and user flow diagrams helped to envision the paths for each.

One of the user flow diagrams

3. Develop

The MVP scope

As we were moving into the development stage the first priority was to cover the flows that could validate the dealership workflow quickly: website editing, inventory control, lead tracking, and vehicle management.

Wireframing

Wireframes helped us set up the main content control flows before moving into the polished website builder and admin experience.

Some of the low fidelity wireframes

Website builder

The website builder lets dealership teams customize their public website, edit content sections, choose templates, preview the result, and publish updates with minimal support.

Website builder home page editing
Template picker for a hero section
Hero section layout
Inventory section template
Global color settings
Website preview modal

Inventory management

Inventory management gives dealers a detailed view of vehicle status, filters, import and export flows, sold vehicle handling, and the add-vehicle form.

Inventory management table

Design system

The design system helped keep the admin product, website builder, and dealership-facing flows consistent as the product scope expanded.

One of the design system boards

Icon library

The icon library supports car body type selection, vehicle attributes, and common admin actions across the product.

Icon library

4. Deliver

User testing

User testing sessions followed the design of the first prototypes.

Method

Website builder and inventory management were the first pieces in the MVP we handed over for testing. Unstructured user testing was held with four dealers and one SME. The key takeaways were:

Interviewees

We reached out to the first interviewed dealers and asked them to review the platform.

Some of the key takeaways from the first rounds of testing were:

  • One major concern the users reported was the long onboarding. Despite our initial plan to provide a way for the dealers to create their website and have it deployed right at the final stage of onboarding, users noted that they would rather skip it and give a try with the rest of the functionality first and only after that pass to trying out the website builder.
  • Robust synchronization with DMS services the dealers use is a key for their daily activities so supporting that and keeping those updated was the second major concern noted by the users.
  • Five out of five users having participated in the research noted the convenience of the interface to be a crucial factor for them in becoming a returning user.

Summing up

Working on this product has been a big challenge given the tight timeframes and the specific niche market. However it was also an unforgettable experience requiring a lot of collaboration, time management and communication skills.