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🇯🇵🇺🇸 Growing International E-Commerce Inventory

With 12M+ listings per month in Japan, Mercari's international inventory is expansive. In an effort to meet Mercari US's buyer demand with Mercari Japan's extensive supply, Mercari launched this project to enable cross-border purchases within their U.S. application. Through a multi-phased research approach, I provided the team with data-driven insights to direct design, copy, and business decisions leading up to the product release.

👩🏻‍💼 My Role

Senior UX Researcher

🥅 Project Goals

Enable Mercari US customers to purchase items directly from Mercari Japan.

💭 Methods

  • Cognitive Walkthrough

  • Survey

  • Concept Testing

🗓️ Duration

6 weeks (2024)

📈 Impact

  • Grew the Mercari US's inventory by 100% 

  • Enabled successful inventory sharing between Mercari Japan and Mercari US

Context

Despite Mercari, a digital resale marketplace, having an international reach, customers could not buy items from outside of the country they reside in. Thus, the team wanted to

design a product experience to enable U.S. customers to purchase Japanese products, ultimately growing the U.S. platform's inventory.

Key Research Questions:

  1. What demographic of users currently purchase items directly from Japan to U.S.?

  2. How can the international purchasing process be improved? 

  3. Is there interest to incorporate this ability into the product?

My Approach

Group 4.png

Stakeholder Interviews

1 week

Cognitive Walkthrough

1 week

Survey

1 week

Usability Study

1 week

Impact

1. Stakeholder Interviews

To kick off the project, I held one-on-one interviews with representatives from Product Management, Business Development, and Data Science to understand what they hoped to learn from research and what decisions the research would ultimately inform. 

 

Output

Informed project direction and aligned on:

  • Desired outcomes

  • What success looks like for each stakeholder

  • Current blockers hindering on our ability to deliver these outcomes

💡Key Learnings

  • The team didn't know how aware/unaware existing customers were of the Mercari Japan platform and inventory.

  • The team didn't understand existing levels of desire and usage of purchasing directly from Japan.

2. Cognitive Walkthrough

Alongside designers, product managers, and engineers, I conducted a cognitive walkthrough to purchase a Mercari Japan item through Buyee, a popular Japanese proxy service used to facilitate overseas purchases.

Output

Documentation and understanding of:

  • How proxy services work, specifically around shipping and pricing

  • Pain points and blockers with proxy services

💡Key Learnings

  • Item search and discovery was exceedingly challenging given translation limitations.

  • Purchasing from a Japanese proxy service is a multi-step process that is not clearly communicated upfront (initial purchase > ship to proxy > proxy storage > international shipping to US).

Screenshot 2024-07-24 at 3.01.09 PM.png

Item Detail Page on Buyee, a proxy service

3. Survey

Next, I surveyed Mercari U.S. customers to understand their (1) awareness of Mercari Japan, (2) expected items available on Mercari Japan, (3) likelihood to purchase from Mercari Japan, and (4) past experiences purchasing directly from Japan.

Output

Informed project direction on:

  • Japanese item categories to prioritize in a slow product roll out

  • Design choices on how to display Japanese inventory items within the U.S. product

  • Content decisions to educate users about Mercari Japan and how proxy services work 

💡Key Learnings

  • Respondents' awareness of Mercari Japan was exceptionally low, despite the Japanese branch being Japan's largest marketplace and owner of Mercari U.S.

  • When considering this new feature, respondents are most concerned about international shipping cost and time.

  • Items people are most interested in purchasing from Mercari Japan include (1) collectibles & figurines, (2) anime merchandise, (3) clothing & fashion, and (4) electronics.

4. Usability Study

After collaborating closely with my UX counterparts to help sculpt the prototypes of the international shopping product experience, I designed a moderated usability study to understand task success rate, subjective satisfaction, and subjective comprehension.

Output

Informed minor copy and design adjustments for the MVP launch.

💡Key Learnings

  • Upfront repetition of design and content patterns communicating an international purchase made the checkout process clear, expediting user comprehension.

  • Calling out the proxy service named as an official Mercari partner built trust in the experience; this was not a deterrent.

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Item Detail Page

Fulfiller Profile

Cart

📈 Impact

I am unable to report on this project's impact metrics other than increasing inventory by 100%, as I left before other metrics were known. That said, metrics to be tracked include:

  • Gross merchandise value (GMV)

  • Average order value (AOV)

  • Sell through rate (STR)

  • Customer satisfaction (CSAT)

  • Customer awareness

💭 Reflections

👍 What went well

  • Cross-functional engagement with the cognitive walkthrough to level-set experience understandings

  • Survey results uncovering major lack in awareness of Mercari Japan by U.S. customers; insights steering critical decisions early in the design process

👎 Missed opportunities

  • Rushed deadlines resulting in key design components being removed from development for the MVP launch

  • UX Benchmarking and diary study of post-MVP launch experience

UP NEXT...
Prioritizing User and Business Requirements

Strategic UXR | Mercari 2024  | MaxDiff Survey

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