Seller Hub Mobile App

Seller Hub Mobile App 
2018- 2020 : A Feature-by-Feature UX Story of the Flipkart Seller Hub Mobile App
The primary goal of the Flipkart Seller Hub Mobile App initiative was to empower sellers to run their entire Flipkart business via mobile. This aimed to make business more convenient and potentially cheaper for sellers and increase their engagement with Flipkart. A key objective was to provide frictionless 24/7 easy access to business information for owners and managers on the go.
The app was intended to be the single channel for sellers to conduct business on their mobile devices. This focus on mobile was driven by the reality that owners and managers are constantly moving and need access without a computer.
The Vision
"To empower sellers to run their entire Flipkart business through a mobile experience."
Product Strategy
Product Positioning
Establish the mobile app as the single channel to conduct business on their mobile devices.
Value Addition
Provide frictionless visibility of performance & critical metrics for owners, managers on the go.
Cost of Doing Business
Make it more convenient and potentially cheaper for sellers to do business on Flipkart.
Seller Engagement
Increase seller engagement with Flipkart through mobile.
My role
Design
Leading end-to-end design and research for the Seller Hub Mobile app.
Enhancements to functionality and user-friendliness.
Successful launch of multiple phased features.
Implementation of scalable design system. 
Establish design philosophy for products/features within the Supply and Selection team.
Collaborate
App Engineering 
Seller Support and training
Seller Marketing
MP Business
App Product and Design (Me)
Partner teams such as PnP and PLA
Leadership members
Special recognition was given to the Listings, SPF, SS, Growth, and Onboarding Engineering teams.
The Challenge
Why Mobile?
Sellers, especially owners and managers, are constantly moving (engagements, finances, offline activities) and need 24/7 easy access to their business information without requiring a computer.
Pre-Transformation Challenges
Limited Functionality: Significant gap between the desktop Seller Portal and the existing app. Not all operational activities were supported.
Usability Hurdles: Absence of a mobile-friendly user experience and slow response time. Play Store feedback highlighted tech issues, pages not opening, and bugs.
Data Sync Issues: Not always in sync with data on the website.
Missing Critical Features: Common asks included Advertising (PLA) metrics, easier seller support contact, and better notifications.
Technical Debt: The app had stability issues, with feedback noting it was "buggy". Sessions crashing was a problem.
Research and Planning 
1
Identify Target Users
Focused on Primary (Owner/Manager) and Secondary (Operations personnel) profiles with distinct needs.
2
Extensive Customer Research
Analyzed Current Usage Metrics
Gathered Feedback from existing users, surveys, and the Play Store
Performed Competitive Analysis of other marketplace apps (Amazon, Snapdeal, Lazada, etc.)
Held Focus Group Discussions to understand sellers' daily routines, mobile usage, and missing features
3
Define High-Level Requirements
Focused on sellers' Jobs (tasks to get done), Outcomes (how they measure success), and Constraints.
4
Prioritize MVP & Scope
Used research to define the initial scope and prioritize features.
5
Define Success Metrics
Established metrics across Input (active users, engagement), L2 (adoption, activities), and L1 Output (rating, NPS, growth).
Target Users
Business Owners
Manages critical actions, payments and team
Managers
Sales Manager, Business Growth Manager
Operation Executives
Inventory, Listings, Orders, Returns and SPF
App has 22000+ daily active sellers across 27000+ devices 
70%+ Gold and Silver sellers in DAU

Most commonly used pages are orders and payments

Feature parity across Android and iOS is expected

12% usage from iOS Standard callout in surveys

Too many tech issues that need to be fixed PLA, Smart and FBF metrics, easier way to contact SS, better notifications are common asks came out in competitive study as well
Typical Design Process - Example Advertising (PLA) on App
Requirements Gathering
Defined what sellers needed to do with Ads on mobile (monitor, manage campaigns, add budget).
User Study
Understood how sellers used PLA, common actions, metrics importance (ROI, action rate, CVR), frequency, and pain points. Key learnings included the importance of performance monitoring multiple times a day and preference for numbers over graphs.
Data Hierarchy
Defined the critical information for campaigns (Status, Budget, Budget Remaining, ROI, etc.) and prioritized its display.
Concept Ideation
Explored different approaches ranging from Data-heavy to Action-heavy and a Balanced view, considering pros and cons of each for mobile interaction and navigation flow.
Prototyping
Developed interactive prototypes to test concepts and flows.
User Testing
Validated designs with sellers to refine the user experience and information architecture.
Design choices were made based on studies, e.g., highlighting KPIs upfront and driving contextual actions. The final design aimed to provide a clear performance summary, easy access to campaigns/ad groups, and inline actions.
Feature suite design
I led the end-to-end design and research for the Flipkart Seller Hub Mobile app. This involved overseeing the product design for key features, ensuring they met seller needs and business goals. I also contributed to broader initiatives like implementing Design System V0, ensuring visual consistency and efficiency.
Business Dashboard
Giving visibility into business performance and growth opportunities.
Listings Management
Simplifying catalog, price, and inventory edits.
Advertising (PLA)
Enabling campaign monitoring, budget actions.
Seller Support
Providing 24×7 access to support tickets & easy tracing
Protection Fund (SPF)
Improving issue management and claim filing.
Buyer Questions
Facilitating direct seller-buyer interaction.
Promotions
Opt-In & Opt-out from time bound Flipkart promotions
BBD '20 on App
Added BBD preparation, live sales dashboard and insights
Business Dashboard
 Critical Feature 
Description: To provide sellers with an Overall Business View, highlighting key information Flipkart wants to draw attention to, and making key operational callouts concisely and proactively visible.
Why it was needed: Owners/Managers need frictionless visibility (24*7 easy access) of their businesses to take quick actions. The current view in the Seller App failed to provide a complete overview and cover critical metrics. There were no major "red flags" callouts apart from account deactivation. User needs included Business Summary (GMV, trend), Performance Summary (Overall rating, Return %), Inventory status, Listing insights, and Growth insights (Price/Product/Promo suggestions).
Design & Implementation: Information shown should be Critical, have High frequency updates, and provide Insights leading to actions. The dashboard provides views of business health, not just performance.
Impact: 
Provides sellers with critical insights into their sales, service quality, product quality, and performance tier. 
Offers views on pending orders, returns that need action, and payout information. 
Enables exploration of growth opportunities like Promotions and PLA campaigns.
Listings Management 
 53.34% Adoption 
Description: This feature was aimed at making it easy for sellers to manage their online catalog, specifically the critical and frequent actions like editing price and inventory. 
Why it was needed: Inventory and order health stats were identified as user needs. Sellers needed to update stock. The existing app allowed stock updates only for non-smart and single-location inventory.
Design & Implementation: We solved for a basic card structure that was scalable and reusable for future releases. User testing for Listings showed good overall experience (9/10) and ease of exploring listings (8/10) and editing price (9/10). Observations highlighted that search was a first priority to find listings, navigating to listing details was successful, and filters were easy to understand. User queries included confusion about shipping/pricing recommendations and listing statuses.
Impact: 
Sellers using listings management on App increased from 58k to 70k (20% increase).
Feature adoption increased by 14%, and activity level from App doubled from 6% to 12%.
It helped in reducing effort by 20% for Design and Engineering sprints for features like Price Recommendations.
Contributed to an 11% impact on Weekly Active Sellers.
Feature adoption on Mobile reached 53.34%.
Advertising (PLA)
 40% Adoption 
Description: To increase engagement of Advertising using the App as a key channel, making it easier for sellers to monitor and manage Ad campaigns on the go and get more sellers to use PLA as a growth lever.
Why it was needed: PLA was a top feature request from sellers via feedback channels like interviews, calls, and surveys. Sellers wanted an option to manage ad campaigns, including playing and pausing existing ones.
Design & Implementation: The design process involved requirements gathering, user studies, data hierarchy definition, concept ideation, prototyping, and user testing. 
User Studies: Key learnings included that performance monitoring is key (done 2-3 times a day), sellers prefer numbers over graphs, and common actions include pausing/aborting campaigns and increasing budget. Sellers want to understand where budget is spent and the balance.
Data Hierarchy: Critical information for campaigns was prioritized, including Campaign Name, Status, Budget, Budget Remaining, and ROI.
Ideation: Explored different approaches: Data-heavy, Action-heavy, and Balanced. The final design likely incorporated aspects of these.
Impact: 
Higher Budget Load (35%) and higher ad spend (12%) by sellers on App compared to Desktop.
The rate of growth in Ad Spend is also higher on the App (4% vs -1%).
Feature adoption reached 40% on Mobile.
Contributed to a 13% impact on Weekly Active Sellers.
Example of Seller Communication
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Seller Support
 40% Adoption 
Aim was to enhance the Support experience on the App, making it easier for sellers to monitor and create support tickets. This also involved migrating from Webview to React Native.
Why it was needed: Thousands of sellers were weekly visiting the support option and creating tickets via the App, even when the option was limited. There was consistent negative feedback through SD support tickets and App reviews for poor seller support experience. Sellers wanted an enhanced experience via the App, completing the use case for a mobile user. Real-time communication through push notifications could drive seller pending actions.
Design & Implementation: Included user studies, defining entities and their importance, evaluating options, design walk-through, scoping, and defining success metrics. The general design process involved requirements gathering, user study, data hierarchy, concept ideation, prototyping, and user testing.
Impact: 
The seller base using the Support Tickets feature increased from 340 to 5610, a 93.93% increase. 
Approximately 32.76% of total tickets were created via the app.
Initial metrics showed over 1300 unique sellers visiting the support section and over 130 tickets created via the App.
SSAT improved by 60% for App users post launch of SPF, which is related to Support.
Feature adoption reached 40% on Mobile.
Protection Fund (SPF)
 23% Adoption 
SPF allows sellers to claim from Flipkart for returned products that are damaged. The aim for launching this on App was to ease the seller pain in filing these claims. The feature provides complete visibility and issue management capability
Why it was needed: Improving SPF was a scope of improvement for Return Processing. Sellers were already using the feature, but there was scope for improvement. Seller Support features like SPF lacked Guided Assistance initially.
Design & Implementation: Part of the broader Seller Support design process, involving understanding user needs and flows related to filing claims. V0 design focused on creating and monitoring tickets, including SPF related issues.
Impact: 
30% of the claims were filed from App (Oct’20).
SSAT improved by 60% for App users post launch.
Contributed to a 6% impact on Weekly Active Sellers.
Feature adoption on Mobile reached 23%.
Promotions
 26.3k Monthly Adoption 
Description: To give sellers the ability to view and manage their promotions from the seller app. The primary focus was on Listing offers (~90% of offers created).
Why it was needed: This was a key ask in various channels, including interviews, calls, feedback via app, and surveys about app usage. There was a significant overlap between sellers who opted into promotions and those who use the seller app, presenting an opportunity. Making it easier for sellers to opt-in could lead to more time spent on the app and higher NPS. Nudges via the app could increase opt-in rates and reduce dependency on account managers.
Design & Implementation: Key decisions included progressive disclosure of primary information upfront and representing "Sale" as a banner. Sellers need to know about new eligible offers and offers they have already opted into.
Impact: 
Contributed to a 6% impact on Weekly Active Sellers.
Feature adoption on Mobile had significant monthly usage (26,311k) in August.
Buyer Questions
 Buyer Connect Feature 
Description: Facilitating direct seller-buyer interaction via the app. The feature involved a UI review for the Android app.
Why it was needed: A user query indicated that Q&A is helpful only if they get notified on the app and email so they can reply immediately, highlighting a need for better functionality and notifications.
Design & Implementation: Adding buyer questions to quick links, the layout of the landing page with tabs for unanswered, answered, and bookmarked questions, showing a limited number of questions initially with an expand option, and details on the question details page including linking to listing details and character limits for answers.
Impact: 
Enables sellers to respond to buyer queries directly from the mobile app, potentially improving response times and customer satisfaction.
Big Billion Day (BBD '20)
 Yearly Feature 
Description: Providing hooks for content related to BBD preparation to generate engagement on the App.
Why it was needed: To leverage major sales events like BBD to drive app usage and establish the app as a communication channel.
Design & Implementation: Kept in an MVP form initially. The event was successful and paved the way to design and develop event-specific experiences. The same UX was planned for BBD 21.
Impact: 
Successfully generated engagement on the App during BBD 2020.
Paved the way for future event-specific experiences.
Business Impact
4.4
App Rating from 3.8
India's No.1 marketplace app
192%
DAU Increase
Between Dec '18 and Oct '20
5M+
App Downloads
Increased from 1 Million
35%
Time Spent
Average daily time increase
Feature Adoption
Seller Testimonials
Seller testimonials reflect happiness with the app's functionality, updates, and ease of use for critical tasks like order notifications and inventory updates.
Responsive Updates
"I am happy with the way this app functions. The tech team keeps rolling updates whenever required or as per market demand. Thanks to the team."
Real-Time Notifications
"It's a very useful app for sellers. We get notifications while getting orders. And it's very useful to update inventory."
Improved Usability
"Flipkart seller app is now very good working. Everything is easy and comfortable like update, pricing, new listing inventory. We can check product ratings on the spot."
Recognition
Excited and honored to be acknowledged for the efforts I have spearheaded thus far!
Technical Enhancements & Stability
Transition to React Native
Updated from version 38 to 61. This facilitated faster feature adoption (rate improved by 29x).
Improved Stability
Implemented Firebase setup for tracking performance and stability. Refactored the codebase to newer standards and added test cases for critical flows.
Reduced Crashes
Successfully brought down the number of sessions crashing by 70%. Achieved 98.5% crash free sessions and 99.3% crash free users.
Automated Testing
Invested in an Automation test framework to ensure automated testing before releases.
CodePush
Used to release React Native code quickly for faster bug fixes and better adoption when no Android dependency existed.
These technical efforts were crucial to provide a reliable and performant experience, addressing previous pain points related to instability and speed.
Design System & Efficiency
Visual Consistency
Unified look and feel across the app
Reusable Components
Scalable and reusable structures
Efficiency Gains
20% reduction in design and engineering effort
A foundational element of the design work was the implementation of Design System V0. It contributed to visual consistency and user-friendliness across the app. The system solved for basic component structures (like the listing card) in a scalable and reusable way, which helped in reducing effort for Design and Engineering sprints by 20% for features like Price Recommendations.
This laid the groundwork for a more efficient and consistent design process across future feature development. My current work includes developing and scaling enterprise design systems across many tools.
Future & Ongoing Impact
Desktop Parity
Achieve parity with all functionalities available on the desktop Seller dashboard
Business Growth
Elevate the Business View and Growth opportunities use cases
Expand User Base
Enable the Operational persona to perform tasks like catalog creation, order processing, and inventory updates via mobile
Selection Insights
Provide selection insights to sellers
Guided Assistance
Launch Guided Assistance for Support
The transformation laid a solid foundation, but the journey continues. The aim remains to make the Flipkart Seller Hub Mobile App the go-to tool for sellers to manage and grow their business efficiently from anywhere.
Conclusion
Vision Fulfilled
Empowered sellers with convenient, efficient mobile experience
User-Centric Approach
Rigorous design process addressing seller needs
Technical Excellence
Addressed debt and improved stability
Business Impact
Significant improvements in satisfaction, engagement, and growth
The Flipkart Seller Hub Mobile App transformation successfully delivered on its vision to empower sellers by providing a convenient, efficient, and insight-rich mobile experience. Through a rigorous user-centric design approach, addressing technical debt, and launching core features, the app achieved significant improvements in user satisfaction, engagement, adoption, and ultimately, seller business growth.
Thank You
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