Making Etsy Ads easier for sellers
Sellers who use Etsy Ads have control over which of their listings are being advertised; however, keeping track can be challenging. Ads management is siloed from the seller’s primary workflow and a listing’s advertised status can be impacted by other factors.
We saw an opportunity to make it easier for sellers to use Etsy Ads by integrating it into their core journey.
My role
I led the strategic vision and development of this body of work in lockstep with my research partner Sanjana Rajagopalan, driving clarity from ambiguity. My design investigations and our workshops defined our team’s focus for the following quarter and also scaled to benefit other seller teams.
Customer service complaint revealed unexpected Ads behavior
The challenge
A customer service complaint led us to an edge case that, on deeper investigation, revealed gaps in the Etsy Ads product at a more global level. When a listing’s overarching status (e.g. sold out) affected advertising in an unexpected way we realized:
Sellers couldn’t view or modify advertising for their inactive listings from the Etsy Ads dashboard
We weren’t wholly familiar with all the listing statuses and how their behavior impacted advertising
It was crucial for us to understand at what points Ads intersects with the broader journey of a listing (what I named the “listing lifecycle”).
Outcome:
As a seller I can easily assess and manage Ads settings for my listing regardless of its status.
Validating the opportunity
To help understand the scope I did some lightweight, timegated explorations. I began on the Ads dashboard where I had the most familiarity, and three higher touch screens in the seller workflow.
My Ads dashboard options felt too narrow, treating a symptom and not addressing the underlying issue, a concern I brought to my analyst and product manager. Together we verified that focusing on the Ads dashboard would only benefit a small subset of users and wasn’t a good investment of our engineering resources.
However, my explorations of other pages had highlighted inconsistencies as well as experiential gaps where Ads could be integrated for a more seamless experience.
Ads dashboard explorations confirmed narrowly focusing only on this space wasn’t a good investment
Lightweight explorations for Ad integration on other pages as well as parity across modal styling
The leads and I also saw how this work complemented the team’s current focuses. Demystifying the listing lifecycle meant we could establish where to best layer Ads into the seller’s journey from a holistic perspective. We could identify key moments and target the right sellers at the right time.
Understanding the listing lifecycle
I worked with my research partner to dig into the listing lifecycle and she proposed using the service blueprint tool. Not only could it capture the depth, breadth, and structure we needed but it would build shared understanding and help uncover meaningful insights.
In order to even build a blueprint foundation we needed to capture the listing ecosystem. I invested time interviewing other seller designers, doing manual audits of various flows, and investigating differences between Ads and non-Ads users.
User flow, notes, and screenshots establishing what we know about the listing lifecycle
My researcher and I used that deep dive knowledge to create the base frameworks for our four target listing scenarios: Creation, Sold out, Expired, and Deactivated listing.
Base framework for ‘Creating a listing’ scenario
Building the blueprints
Our goal was to build these out with input from the team. When our first attempt to do that async failed we took a step back. I wanted to make the process even more collaborative given that the blueprint was such an intricate and unfamiliar tool for the group.
I reframed the ask to be clearer and easier to accomplish. I leaned into delegation, pairing people up on a single scenario, and moderating breakout groups with my researcher. I kicked each mini workshop off with a foundational review of artifacts from my internal audit, followed by a discussion as we filled out the boards together, including future states.
Foundational review of each scenario for breakout groups
Evolution of blueprints with team input
This pivot was incredibly helpful: In just two hours we completed all four blueprints, unblocking us after a week and a half. We also found teammates were really engaged in the small scale conversations.
Findings and next steps
The completed blueprints revealed friction points and we came away with four key observations:
No quick Ads actions were available at points where a seller made decisions about a listing
We didn’t offer Ads guidance at crucial moments
The default setting for a listing to be advertised varied
Listing status changes were passive with no active seller notification
We formed recommendations on making Ads easier and increasing parity throughout the seller experience. We synthesized the current state and future ideas into a feature list, working with team leads to prioritize. This informed the bulk of our roadmap the following quarter, and we made sure to socialize parity opportunities with other seller teams.
Prioritized features and future ideas
Project details
Role: Lead designer
Core team: 1 researcher, 1 product manager, 1 engineering manager
Partners: Etsy Ads team, Seller designers
Timeframe: Q2 2023