Launching OfferUp
The easiest way to buy and sell locally.
If we met in an elevator, this is what I’d tell you.
I joined OfferUp mid-pivot as the Founding Designer and 5th employee. Our mission was to create the easiest way to buy and sell locally. The vision was to supercharge local commerce. I led design across product, brand, people, and ops. Our strategy: design for growth first, then engagement, then retention. After 3 years we had more than 15 million daily active users, 5+ min session time and a daily open rate over 80%.
In a mobile-first world, we kept the feed to photos only, built it as an infinite scroll with pull to refresh, and personalized it around what you were looking for, so there was always something to pique your interest and keep you hooked.
From day one, every account was tied to Facebook, showing your “Facebook connections” on every product page, real names, 5-star ratings system with comments and TruYou verification program enhanced your listing discovery rank.
Intentionally designed to let users get the full experience without an account. Only asking them to create one in high leverage moments, when sending an offer or completing a listing.
To supercharge marketplace supply I designed a simple 1-2-3 posting process that could be done in seconds. Our research showed that photos were the deciding factor 90% of the time, so we chose to make all other product details optional, maximizing post flow conversion rate.
Facebook login only, so every new listing and every sale posted to your feed. Friends saw what you were selling. Large invite button at the top of the home feed and a big share button on every item page. Peak viral coefficient of 2.1.
The big idea
Challenge, plot twist
Couponing app → marketplace
OfferUp started as DealSpringer, a location-based coupon app for retail. When I joined, the pivot to a peer-to-peer marketplace had just begun. One of OfferUp’s first angel investors had given us a goal. Acquire 5,000 users in 9 months she would lead a new $1.5m seed round at a $5 million valuation.
Research, no stone left unturned
We put our first $20,000 into research. In five weeks we talked to more than 1,700 people, and about 30 percent of them had never bought or sold peer to peer at all.
Coffee for 15 minutes.We bought people coffee at Starbucks in exchange for a 15-minute interview.
Selling to learn.We sold hundreds of used things on Craigslist, eBay, and Facebook buy-and-sell groups, and gave people a discount to let us interview them about the experience.
A lab in the office.We set up a lab in our office, where I watched hundreds of people buy and sell, live.
People who’d never tried.Focus groups with people who had never used any of these platforms, to find out what was holding them back.
Craigslist had the people, but no way to know who you were dealing with.
eBay had the structure, but listing was complicated and shipping cost too much.
Facebook groups had the trust, but no listings, no search, and no way to tell if something had sold.
People who’d never tried told us what it would take: real identities, built-in messaging, and listings with photos.
After the first round of research, we set up a prototyping lab. 10 to 20 people came in every week to test working prototypes and give us feedback on each workflow.
Wheels on the bus
Amid the app explosion, we quickly realized our real competition wasn’t other buy-and-sell marketplaces. It was social apps like Instagram and Pinterest, competing for the same minutes on the bus, and the same investor dollars. An investor could back the apps everyone was already opening every day, or back OfferUp. So we built OfferUp to be a social platform, and measured ourselves the way social apps were measured.
A need for speed
A product has a million small details, and early on we got stuck debating them. So we set design tenets: simple rules for when two good ideas conflict.
Moments of leverage
No permissions until we needed them. No account until the moment it mattered.
Photos first
Everywhere in the marketplace, we optimized for what people wanted most: the photos. 90 percent of people decided from the photos alone.
Safety first
At every step, we wanted people to feel as safe as possible buying from, and selling to, someone they’d never met.
Snap and sell
Photos came first, because you couldn’t post without one, so the required part was done right away. It also kept scams out: every listing needed a live photo taken in the app, so fake and stock photos never made it in. Then a name and a price. Everything else was optional. The last step showed your item exactly as buyers would see it, with one button: Post.
The magic word
Every item page had two buttons floating at the bottom of the screen: Make Offer and Ask. “Ask” registered right away, since most people had a question. And transactions that started with Ask sold through at twice the rate.
Designed for growth
Pass it on
We launched with one way to sign up: Facebook. It saved us time, and it made OfferUp social from day one. Every new listing posted to your Facebook feed, and every sale did too. Friends followed the link, saw what you were selling, and wanted to try it themselves.
Block by block
New users found nothing nearby and left. So we focused on a few cities at a time, starting with Seattle, Phoenix, and Sacramento.
Going prime time
I directed and produced ten social and TV spots, including Life of a Chair. Weekly downloads went from 3,800–8,000 to 12,000–30,000 while they aired.
Local flavor
Our early adopters came for deals. The more polished we made the app, the less interested they were. So OfferUp was designed to feel like the local diner, not the corporate steakhouse.
