Sella’s mission is to make buying and selling used stuff completely, 100% frictionless. That means tap to buy and tap to sell with confidence, with trust and efficiency at every step. Sella is unlocking resale for the masses with the first Gig 2.0 "sell my stuff" service. Below are some of the key challenges I faced as Head of Design while launching this platform.
“I'm never sure what to do or how to price things, and I don't feel comfortable meeting strangers at my house.”
- Petra C., Portland, OR
One-tap resale
Sella’s target audience is women 30-55 years of age who are proficient at social media. Our goal was to minimize work for the seller while providing them full control and transparency over the resale process. Here's how it works:
1. Schedule a pickup or drop-off your items
Once a pickup or drop-off was booked by the seller, they received instructions to help them prepare the items for sale with tasks such as: clean the item, include accessories, and pack/wrap so items don’t get damaged in transit.
2. Follow-along with our selling process
At this point, items are further digitized and enriched. From a design standpoint, the goal was to offer the seller full transparency of the process and present a centralized reference point for montoring sale progress, and deciding on next steps when an important decision needed to be made. A timeline view was a logical choice for such requirements.
3. Approve the listing and asking price
Once Sella Experts have prepared the listing, the seller is notified. The seller can edit the listing to their liking, and once reviewed and approved, the listing is posted to the appropriate C2C marketplaces.
4. Sella handles the sale, and the seller gets paid
Items are listed on all relevant C2C marketplaces. Sella handles buyer questions, payments, shipping and local meet ups. When the item sells, the seller is paid for their item (minus fees).
“Sella sold a number of items that sat in my basement for years, and I'm certain I never would have sold them. It's literally been like getting free money.”
- Kevin E., Portland, OR
A safer, easier buying experience
“How can we make Craigslist feel like Amazon?” was the question we asked ourselves when approaching the buying experience.
Listing Page
When a propsective buyer clicks on a listing (from Craigslist, Facebook, eBay, etc), they are directed to the centralized Sella listing page.
Purchase Flow
The purchase flow provides the buyer with a familar B2C checkout flow with flexible payments options - a first for personal resale.
Returns Flow
If an item is damaged or doesn't fit the description, the buyer can submit a return request.
“As a single female I don’t feel comfortable meeting strangers at my home, but with Sella I don’t have to worry.”
- Rhonda S., Portland, OR
Microtasking powered by the gig economy
Listing a product on a C2C marketplace can be tedious and time-consuming. By reducing the selling process into micro-tasks, we were able to turn resale into a virtual assembly line with different tasks being completed by different people - anywhere in the world. Sella offers gig-economy style work opportunities to local and remote freelancers and Amazon Mechnical Turk.
Task categories include: item identification, item photos, item valuation, listing enrichment, and listing writing.
Ops Admin Dashboard
Sella Experts are coordinated from a central dashboard, where the core operations team can assign tasks to them through the Expert Mobile App. The dashboard provides high resolution data that yields
an accurate picture of cost and unit economics and shows us where we can make systemic gains, with product development and workflow optimizations.
Expert Mobile App
The mobile web app we built for Sella Experts serves multiple purposes. It helps onboard new freelance Sella Experts, guides them through training, gives them a prioritized task list inbox, and serves as an HR/Payments portal for freelancer wages.
