Scalable Product Campaigns for Marketplace Vendors
Designing a new feature for marketplace vendors, enabling scalable management of promotional slots for featured offers on the product page.
Eneba.com
Jul. 2020
Activities & methods
Low-fi mockups
UI design
Documentation
Toolset
Product Specifics
Unlike traditional e-commerce, where each product has its own page, our marketplace displays all offers for the same digital product (activation keys) on a single shared product page. One offer is visually emphasized and referred to as the "Main Offer," which by default showcases the lowest available price.
This setup aligns with the nature of digital products, which are identical and do not need separate pages. The "Main Offer" often drives impulsive purchases, as users tend to choose the first visible offer when it is priced lower than the official price.
Current Situation
The "Main Offer," as the most prominent element, consistently achieved the highest conversion rates. However, it was not monetized, missing a key revenue opportunity.
Sellers competed for the "Main Offer" slot solely by lowering prices, creating a race to the bottom. This strategy disadvantaged sellers unable to further reduce prices, who had to wait until cheaper stocks sold out.
Competitors were already monetizing similar features, making our lack of such functionality a competitive gap in the marketplace.
Design a scalable monetization concept for the "Main Offer" slot, allowing multiple sellers to promote their offers simultaneously. This was crucial to unlocking new revenue streams for the platform while addressing seller needs.
Design the process of creating, managing, and settling promotional campaigns to ensure ease of use and alignment with the platform's overall structure.
Create basic analytics tools to measure campaign performance to make informed business decisions.
Organized a series of workshops with the project initiator to outline the initial concept, define project assumptions, scope, and basic requirements and constraints. These workshops were crucial as the project started from scratch, providing a foundation for all work.
Assumptions & Key Requirements
Campaign Launch: Sellers can launch campaigns to display their offers in the “Promoted Offer” slot (previously referred to as “Main Offer”).
Main Offer becomes Promoted Offer - Rebranded the “Main Offer” to “Promoted Offer,” making it accessible to all sellers of a given product. This slot, known for its high conversion rates, was a key element of the solution.
PPT (Pay-per-Transaction) - Sellers pay only for completed transactions originating from the Promoted Offer slot.
CPT (Cost Per Transaction) - Sellers set the amount they are willing to pay per transaction. Higher bids increase the likelihood of their offer being displayed as promoted.
Scalability - Multiple Offers, Single Slot: An algorithm determines which offer is displayed at any given time by analyzing parameters of all active campaigns and historical transaction data. The exact mechanics of the algorithm are proprietary and will not be disclosed.
Budget Effectiveness - Sellers can set a budget limit for each campaign and access analytics to evaluate the effectiveness of ongoing or completed campaigns.
Customer’s Perspective - The concept leverages impulsive buying behavior. Customers often select the first, most accessible offer on the product page without deep analysis of alternative options.
Given that the concept of this functionality and its payment model was not inherently innovative, I conducted a general review of two popular solutions: Facebook Ads and Google AdSense. The aim was to understand their approach and interfaces, despite limited access to business accounts on these platforms. This research was not an in-depth comparison to identify differences or competitive advantages but rather a way to familiarize myself with the interface design and their payment approaches.
Research Steps
Reviewed the functionalities available to private users on Facebook Ads and Google AdSense.
Watched instructional videos explaining how Google and Facebook promoted products.
Analyzed documentation and guides for both platforms.
Read articles and marketing publications, such as "How to launch Google Ads/Facebook Ads," to understand current principles.
Findings
The concept was entirely new to the gaming industry, where competitors like G2A.com and Kinguin.net used simpler, non-scalable monetization models.
Competitors' approaches involved direct payments for a "Main Offer" slot, which allowed only a single seller to appear as promoted at a time.
The goal was to create a straightforward algorithm that allowed multiple sellers of the same digital product to run concurrent campaigns, enabling their offers to be displayed as promoted. The algorithm followed the principle: “The more you pay, the more frequently your offer is displayed as promoted.” This functionality provided opportunities for sellers who could no longer compete solely on pricing, increasing overall marketplace revenue.
Interface & communication design (My Role) - Designed the interface for two perspectives:
Seller’s perspective: Communicating the payment model, campaign creation process, and campaign management.
Customer’s perspective: Ensuring a seamless experience for product search and purchase decisions.
Algorithm development (PM’s Role)
Created an algorithm to dynamically display promoted offers based on conditions defined by sellers, managing concurrent campaigns effectively.
A-sync collaboration model - Due to the limited availability of the PM, we implemented an asynchronous workflow:
Jira as the primary communication platform.
Feedback sharing using video demos to present iterations and gather feedback.
Live calls limited to essential discussions.
Screenshots from videos I recorded to illustrate product logic and key design decisions. These YouTube-shared recordings supported asynchronous collaboration and streamlined the decision-making process.
Output - this stage resulted in a well-defined project scope, captured through user stories for the seller's perspective.
Enrollment: Sellers can join the experimental product campaign program.
Campaign Creation: Sellers can launch campaigns for eligible products with options to:
Set CPT (Cost Per Transaction): The amount deducted per transaction from the Promoted Offer.
Set Promoted Product Price: The displayed price for promoted products.
Optionally schedule campaigns with defined start and end dates.
Campaign Management: Tools to manage active and completed campaigns, including:
Editing campaign parameters or ending active campaigns.
Deleting campaigns.
Pausing campaigns temporarily.
Analytics and Performance Metrics: Sellers can review key metrics and filter data by time, including:
Promoted Offer Quality: A user-friendly efficiency score reflecting campaign performance.
ARPT (Average Revenue Per Transaction): Earnings per transaction.
Total revenue, spendings, and transactions.
After presenting the concept and conducting grooming sessions with the development team, we performed a time estimation and decided to reduce the project scope to a minimum. All non-essential functionalities for the initial experimental release were removed. This allowed us to stay within the project deadline and focus on delivering a working MVP.
Scope Reduction Decisions
Limited Promoted Offer Visibility
🔒 Initially planned to expand promoted offers across multiple areas of the marketplace.
🔒 Reduced to being displayed solely on the product page.
Removed Features
❌ Budget Cap: Sellers could no longer set campaign spending limits.
❌ Instructional Videos: Replaced with text-based materials (articles and FAQs).
❌ Dedicated Landing Page: Initially planned for attracting new sellers but postponed; the promotion targeted existing marketplace sellers instead.
❌ Responsive Dashboard Design: Since sellers primarily work on desktop devices, mobile optimization was deprioritized.
Challenges in External Validation
Initial plan: Conduct user interviews with sellers to understand their needs, present the concept, and gather feedback.
Problem: Scheduling even a few sessions with business partners proved unfeasible due to their limited availability.
Solution: Validated the concept internally by collaborating with the eCommerce Manager responsible for seller onboarding and relationships. Their deep understanding of digital product sales helped identify key seller perspectives.
Conclusions from Internal Validation
Simplicity of the solution and the use of familiar design patterns (similar to Google/Facebook) revealed no critical red flags.
The only concern raised was the potential for campaign costs to increase product prices on the marketplace, potentially impacting competitiveness.
A key hypothesis for the experiment was to determine whether the conversion rate for the former “Main Offer” (now “Promoted Offer”) would remain stable or improve.
Based on this assessment, we decided to launch the functionality as an experiment to test its effectiveness in a LIVE environment.
Most of the interface work focused on the seller dashboard. During the previous phase, while defining product logic, we visualized the processes using low-fi mockups created on a whiteboard. This allowed us to align on the flow early on.
Thanks to the existing Design System with foundational components, we skipped the intermediate steps and directly moved to Hi-fidelity designs. Utilizing pre-built components, such as chart libraries, significantly streamlined the design process and avoided the need for custom development.
Key Design Deliverables - I designed high-fidelity screens for the following processes:
Seller onboarding to the Experimental Program: Introducing sellers to the functionality.
Creating campaigns: Guiding sellers through the steps of setting up a campaign.
Managing campaigns: Allowing sellers to view details and adjust their campaigns.
Analyzing campaign performance: Providing sellers with visual insights into their budgets and campaign effectiveness.
Purchasing from promoted offers: A seamless flow for reserving slots as promoted offers.
Validation Process
Due to time constraints and the challenge of coordinating with sellers, external validation was not feasible.
Validation occurred internally within the product team and the design team during weekly Design Critiques sessions.
Efficiency Through Pre-Built Components
Using pre-existing Design System components and third-party libraries (e.g., for charts) not only simplified the design process but also ensured consistency and reduced development time.
The order of designed screens followed the developer team’s suggestions, aligning with implementation priorities.
Beta Release
Initially, the functionality was launched as a beta for a limited number of products and a select group of sellers.
After collecting positive feedback from these sellers, the feature was gradually rolled out to a larger group of sellers and extended to more products.
Identified Red Flag ⚠️ Following the release, one critical issue was identified:
Sellers were able to exploit the system by setting extremely high CPT (Cost Per Transaction) values while simultaneously significantly increasing the product price.
This led to promoted offers displaying excessively high prices, often exceeding the official prices of the products.
The issue was addressed by introducing price regulation, setting a maximum allowable price for promoted products.
Positive Business Impact
The functionality is now available to all business sellers.
The feature has operated without any significant changes to the UI since its release and remains effective as of November 2022.
Improved Asynchronous Collaboration with the PM
This project marked the first time I used asynchronous tools on such a scale, not just for demonstrating UI concepts but also for working on functional logic.
Recording whiteboard sketches with a phone or creating screen recordings proved to be an excellent solution during the PM's limited availability. This method allowed for efficient communication and minimized delays in decision-making.
Use of Common Design Patterns
Adopting design patterns from similar products, such as Google AdSense and Facebook Ads, was likely instrumental in ensuring a smooth user experience.
Sellers’ familiarity with these patterns helped avoid critical interface issues, allowing the majority of adjustments to focus on algorithm optimization rather than UI.
Key Consultations with the eCommerce Manager
Despite the lack of time and resources to validate the functionality concept directly with sellers, early consultations with the eCommerce Manager were critical.
Their insights helped identify potential edge cases and predict seller misuse, which ultimately shaped a more robust solution.
Digital Product Insights
This project reinforced how fundamentally different digital products are from physical ones, beyond the purchase and delivery process.
Unlike physical products, which can vary in delivery time, cost, or condition (especially used items), digital products are always identical.
For digital products, price is the primary decision-making factor, posing a unique challenge when communicating the value of the Promoted Offer to the end customer.
