IN NORWAY
An online mobile-driven community and destination site for Chinese students, forgien professionals and Chinese residents of Norway.
Background
In Norway is a WeChat official account (equivalent of a Facebook page) providing articles related to shopping, restaurants, entertainment, local activities, education, cooking all targeted to the Chinese community living in Norway.
In order to improve the customer base and bring the the business to a new level ( due to the technical limitation of official account). In Norway is about to design a mini program built with the WeChat platform.
Why Shifting From a WeChat Official Account to a Mini Program?
Since it’s a WeChat official account, the articles mostly be accessed by account followers and their friends (people who followed each other). The resulting audiance is very limited.
Push notifications can’t be seen by people who are not in the group.
Shifting to a mini program will help to grow more followers
Expand to C2C marketplace to attract a larger audience
Influencers( the owner of the account) can use wechat official accounts to send notifications, but the articles sent on these accounts can’t contain hyperlinks,which it’s difficult to link to products in order to convert from content to e-commerce.
The mini program is built completely within WeChat, it’s usually has a very fast loading speed and smooth integration with WeChat features and navigation
WeChat is a Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media and mobile payment app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile app in 2018, with over 1 billion monthly active users.WeChat mini-programs are “sub-applications” within the WeChat ecosystem.( cloud-based embedded apps with Wechat) They provide advanced features to users such as e-commerce, task management, coupons etc. Most businesses no longer need to launch an App, a WeChat Mini Program will do the work.
Shall we make “In Norway” a 100% C2C marketplace or should the marketplace only be an add-on feature to an exisitng section?
User interview
After 1-1 interviews with people who are currently living in Norway. these are the features should be considered in the design
Articles about food, shopping, restaurant, entertainment,activities,education ..
Chinese language interface
Selling items need include pictures, price, location and exchange currency and other description
Able to send instant messages between seller and buyer
Able to provide feedback and ratings about sellers and buyers
Able to save items and article
Information Architecture
With all the findings from our primary and secondary research, I decided to build Marketplace and Commnunity as two seperate main section for this mini program.
Marketplace: secondhand exchange
Community: articles related to food, shopping, restaurant, entertainment,activities,education in Norway
Both section will bring audience for each other
More flexiable if the strategy will be changed later.
Wireframes
I came up with this set of wireframes to discuss with the team. We seperate the “marketplace” and “ Community” session. Below are the user flows of buying and selling an item on this mini program
Modifications
I did several options for the initial design, after testing and discussion with the group, the final version has come out.
Mockups
Applying simple and bright colour palette, button styles and typeface to create a modern, friendly and minimalism user experience
Marketplace: buy an item
Profile dashboard : Review the buyer
Community: read and comment on the articles you are interested in
Post : sell an item/ share a story
Reflection and Next Steps
After another round of group meeting, we decided to break down the design and develop process into four stages
P1: Basic version “Marketplace”, only focus on sell and buy second hand products
P2: Premium version “Marketplace” , which bring user review and other advanced functions
P3: Marketplace +basic version” community”, which allow customers to post/share/follow the articles
P4: Marketplace +premium version”Community, which allows customers to comment on articles and multimedia contents.