Social sharing
For a long time, people have been reposting screenshots of Carousell listings, profiles and reviews and shared it on other platforms. However, the sharing experience on Carousell does not support their needs well.
On TikTok, we have observed sellers using scrappy means to bring followers to Carousell, the phenomenon happened on many other platforms too.
We talked to users to understand their motivations to post Carousell content on other platforms:
Social media is great for inspiring leads, but hard to close transactions.
Merchants want to share successes to get more sales.
Casuals want to share successes to inspire and sources to recommend.
Quality and relevancy of content are blockers to sharing.
We’ve also tested with users to understand which moment in their seller or buyer journey on Carousell is more sharable.
Below are the more relevant touch points: Listings / Reviews / Profile / Collection / Successful sale & more.
Even a magic moment for our sellers – making a sale successfully, does not entice them to share on other platforms due to the visual style is too loud and the copy is too straightforward about selling, making it unsharable.
“The sold page is not attractive to share. The graphics are cartoonish and it is too loud. I prefer something that is not so “in your face”.
Other cons with using native sharing sheet
Lack of ability for users to edit/customise shared content
Lack of ability to Carousell to recommend platforms that support user growth or seller success
Lack of ability to track which platform a user likes to share to, information stays with OS.
Lack of ability to share custom assets with platforms like Instagram or Facebook to make posts more creative & attractive (background colour, stickers, etc)
How might we design a frictionless sharing experience to drive user acquisition?
My role
I was responsible for the end-to-end process from platform and user research, design, testing and handoff.
Metrics
Total amount of visitors (web & app) from sharing
% of total visitors
Guidelines
#1 Manage expectation
Users want to have full control over what they share on other platforms especially on social media. We should always provide a predictable preview of what will be published if users hit the share button.
#2 Stay relevant
Ensure the sharing format and template fits the user’s goal when sharing a particular moment or touch point on Carousell
Explorations
To support the contextual sharing experience for different platform, we will need to build a custom sharing sheet and populate the sharing channels respectively.
In the end, I’ve decided to go with the sharing sheet with a focus space, without distraction of the listing details in the background. This also allow the custom sharing sheet to be scalable to any other touch points in the platform.
Data informed decisions
Based on existing data, we have sequenced the platform based on usage. We’ve also considered further rules for implementation to ensure the sharing experience to stay frictionless and relevant in the future:
Make sure the platforms chosen are trackable and the sequence of the platforms will be arranged based on usage.
Only surface platforms that users have installed in their devices to ensure the experience is personalised and relevant.
Making content sharing template relevant and share-worthy
To differentiate sold listing sharing and live listing sharing on social media, I’ve designed the moment to be inspired by our brand-Carousell. This has now been one of the more shared assets by our users to share their joy and success in selling secondhand!
Crafting sharing template for each sharing moments
To ensure the content users are sharing will be presentable, recognisable and coherent, I mapped out all the platform restrictions and designed the previews per each sharing moments (listing, profile, selling success & etc).
