Buyam is a hyperlocal social e-commerce solution that aims to provide a seamless shopping experience for customers while empowering vendors with comprehensive tools to manage and sell their products. The goal is to give users a similar experience they would get if buying from a physical store like the ability to bargain.
Buyam Vendor app on the other hand is s mobile/web app that allows vendors/sellers to easily manage their shop and therein, products. The platform's success hinges on its ability to facilitate efficient vendor management, ensuring that vendors can easily list, update, and track their products, reselling products from Buyam's wholesale stock, managing customers and more.
Industry
Ecommerce
Project Year
2022 till present
Design Services
Mobile App, Web App
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Objectives
The main objective was to design a mobile app that enhances the Buyam vendor selling experience . The key goals were to:
- Simplify product management for vendors.
- Provide a concise way for vendors to search for, find and profitably resell products from the Buyam shelf.
- Streamline the process of adding and updating product listings.
- Provide intuitive tools for tracking sales and managing inventory.
- Ensure a seamless user experience that aligns with Buyam’s brand values.
Mobile App View
Challenges
Africans, specifically Cameroonians have a certain reluctance carrying transactions online, especially when it has to do with making purchases . The worry can be attributed to the to the fact that they are buying products they haven’t physically laid their eyes on and trusting the entire process of receiving the exact products they ordered from the vendors catalogue.
On our part, looking for a way to design an experience that makes them feel comfortable choosing an and using Buyam to sell products and services.
Some of the challenges to overcome include included:
- Catering to a wide range of vendors with different ages, education levels, and digital literacy.
- Accommodating multiple languages within Cameroon.
- Designing an intuitive and easy-to-navigate interface.
- Ensuring the app content is relevant to local needs and preferences.
Solution
- Vendors needed a straightforward way to manage their inventory on the go.
- Many vendors needed to know which products from the platform was selling most and which would bring a high turnover.
- Real-time sales tracking and notifications were critical for vendors to respond quickly to market demands.
- A need for a user-friendly interface that could be easily navigated by vendors of varying technical expertise
- Provide multi-language support in the app. Use icons and visual aids to transcend language barriers, and include language selection options for personalized experiences.
- Design a user-friendly interface with clear navigation and simple, straightforward workflows. Use consistent and familiar UI patterns to minimize the learning curve.
- Using visual aids like icons and images to represent actions and concepts, ensuring the interface is intuitive even for users with limited literacy.
Approach
Research and Discovery
This phase covered:
- Conducted interviews with Buyam stakeholder Interviews so as to understand their vision and requirements.
- Carried out surveys with a set of vendors and collected insights to identify pain points, areas for improvement and how we can address them while designing the app.
- We analyzed similar e-commerce platforms to benchmark features and user experience.
Design : Userflow
We mapped out the primary user flows for key tasks:
- Adding new products
- Updating existing listings
- Search for and filter products for the resellable products stock
- Adding products from the Buyam stock to the vendors shop
- Calculating profits for each potential sales made in front the Sellam product stock
- Managing and tracking product orders and delivery.
- Tracking sales and inventory
Design System
Design: Wireframes and Prototypes
Website View
Design : User Interface Design
We focused on creating a clean, modern interface that reflects Buyam’s brand identity. Key design elements included:
- Dashboard: A comprehensive yet intuitive dashboard that gives vendors a quick overview of their store’s performance.
- Product Management: Easy-to-use forms for adding and editing product listings, complete with features for uploading images, setting prices, and managing inventory levels.
- Sellam product management: Easy-to-use process to search, find and add products from the Buyam’s reseller stock to the vendors shops, features to easily set and modify products prices as well as calculate the returns made for each sale.
- Sales tracking: Real-time sales data and analytics to help vendors monitor their performance.
- Notifications: Push notifications for important updates, such as new orders, low stock alerts, customer inquiries and updates from the Buyam team
- Customers: Manage and keep track of customers acquired through the Buyam platform and Sellam shopping.
Developer Handover
After finalizing the initial set of screens for the Buyam Vendor app, we gathered and provided all essential assets, such as design specifications, design systems, images, and icons, to the Buyam development team. Additionally, we are working closely together to guarantee the correct implementation of the designs, including providing any missing assets that were overlooked during the initial delivery.
Sellam Feature
In 2024, the Buyam Vendor app introduced the Sellam feature, enabling users to become vendors without requiring any initial startup capital. Sellam vendors can choose products from the Buyam inventory at wholesale prices, set their profit margins, and sell through popular social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.
Usability Testing
The Buyam Vendor design is an iterative approach and a work in progress. We are constantly collecting feedback to improve on different parts of the app user experience such as :
- Simplifying navigation
- Enhancing the clarity of data presentation
- Ensuring the designs sent to the developers are implemented as they should.