Parcel Comparison Websites

Workshop Facilitation

User Research

I had the opportunity to conduct user research for a customer centric workshop while working for AND Digital. This was for their client Parcel2Go and investor EQT.

Parcel2Go is a British parcel delivery comparison website providing comparisons of domestic and worldwide postage options from a range of providers. AND had multiple ongoing projects within software development and UX/UI with P2G.

EQT is a private equity company who acquired major stakes in Parcel2Go, this was their first time working with AND Digital.

This project helped Parcel2Go and EQT gain a deeper understanding of marketplace sellers via qualitative research, complementing their existing quantitative data. This helped guide them towards implementing quick wins, along with considering long term changes with their current and potential user base.

My team consisted of a Project Lead (UX Principal), Product Analyst and myself. I was placed on this project as a Lead User Researcher.

My responsibilities were to oversee how we would conduct the interviews, take ownership of recruitment, script creation and compiling our findings into a report.

Understand typical sending behaviour and why certain platforms are their preference

Understand the user journey sellers go through to manage sending of their goods on or off the platform.

Understand pain points, confusing elements or challenges sellers have with sending parcels via their platforms, along with the role Customer Service plays in this.

Understand what users would suggest to improve their current experience

Understand seller goals/desires/favoured outcomes to manage parcel sending

We conducted hour long interviews with our participants over the course of almost two weeks. In total, we spoke with 20 people. My colleagues assisted with some of the interviews during the first week, but I took on the majority while having a note taker on the call too.

The note taker inputted the participant’s quotes and behaviours on a Miro note board. This data would be used later to compile the research report, along with content for ideation activities.

User Personas

Prosumers

Infrequent senders who might only send one parcel a month, up to a couple a week. More of a hobby or occasional income.

Single Platform SME

Those who send regularly, closer to 5 parcels a week. Selling is a source of income and manages inventory and sales predominantly through marketplaces.

They approach dealers for information and testing, but they also make use of online information sources such as dealership websites or car comparison portals.

A presentation was given to kick off the workshop, with the main themes below covered during the hour long presentation. Note that after each theme was introduced, two pages of quotes were shown from the persona groups with a video supporting our findings.

Choosing a Parcel Courier

Among low volume and higher volume sellers- reliability came out as the highest priority among price and ease of use when asked to rank each of these in terms of importance.

Participants expressed that they are willing to pay extra as long as their parcels make it to the correct destination in the correct time frame.

For Vinted sellers in particular, the cost of sending parcels is covered by the buyer so they do not need to factor in price.

Low volume sellers were the most likely to stick with one courier as long as it was convenient for them, instead of shopping around for a better rate.

Parcel Comparison Site Awareness

In comparison to low volume sellers, high volume sellers are more savvy and knowledgeable about different courier prices, though have not relied on PCW's for this information. They instead have checked prices individually on courier sites to find the best deal for their business.

Vinted sellers have not used PCWs as they aren't the ones paying for shipping and feel the app offers a variety of postage options to the buyer.

A low volume seller we interviewed has P2G integration (SmartSend), but would prefer to use a mobile/app version for convenience. They are instead relying on the native eBay marketplace.

A SME mentioned that they use P2G to ship outside of the UK, especially since Brexit.

Manage Parcel Sending

Every low volume seller we spoke with managed their parcel sending via the marketplace app or website.

Most high volume sellers we spoke with felt comfortable managing their parcel sending via their marketplaces. This did vary depending on how many parcels were being sent weekly/monthly.

In terms of time spent packing and sending out orders, this ranged from two hours per week for low volume sellers and up to twelve hours for SMEs.

Improvements to Parcel Sending

We saw some variety among personas when asked about improvements to the sending process. It was revealed that some sellers would like to see improvements to the convenience of sending their parcels.

There is a common theme between low and high volume sellers however, that parcel collection would benefit their business/sending process.

It also came up that Royal Mail could provide better tracking for items, instead of waiting until the item is delivered for the status update.

AND Digital had an existing relationship with P2G, the workshop helped grow that relationship and potentially create new pieces of work centring around UX/CX/Research.

Our qualitative insights were able to give more context to the prior research stating that price was the priority for sellers, instead there are multiple factors like convenience and reliability to consider.

The next step recommendations encouraged Parcel2Go to ‘shout’ more about their current offerings. This instilled a sense of urgency to promote tools like SmartSend for example, along with their international shipping rates.

We held a retro meeting after the workshop and agreed that the main area we would improve on is time allocation. In hindsight, four weeks was not enough time to complete the vast amount of video editing and pre workshop preparation.

This was something we fed back to our client partnership team, who took this into consideration for future work.

EQT suggested that we stick to our time boxed activities more strictly in the future, as some of them went over time.

My team were really pleased with how the workshop went, especially considering all the work that was completed in a relatively short amount of time. EQT felt that the research report set the workshop off with a “bang”, and that having all of this user insight at the beginning encouraged discussion and ideation amongst the attendees throughout the two days.

© 2023 Orlagh G – Transforming User Experiences