Craigslist Facelift
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In 1995, Craig Newmark sent an email to “ten to 12” people. Then, the iconic Craigslist.com was born. Yes, that Craigslist. The one with the sketchy reputation and the painfully blue text. But the people Craig made Craigslist for “never wanted fancy stuff.”
25 years later, it looks like a relic of a bygone era, alienating new users despite its functionality and heart.
It's time for a facelift.
Project Scope
- 2 Week Research & Content Development
Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, and Something Blue
Our challenge: modernize Craig’s mid-90's masterpiece while not becoming “big media” or alienating the current users. This was a project for General Assembly, so we followed a relatively conventional process: research, synthesize, design.
High level goals
- Create more effective information architecture
- Update the look while staying true to original
- Rebuild trust for old users who have left and incentivize new users to give Graigslist a try
My Role
- Keep the team organized by tracking work via a Gantt chart
- Create wireframes and low-fidelity prototype in Adobe XD
- Build UI elements for high-fidelity prototype in JustInMind
- Complete slide deck for and lead final oral presentation delivered via Zoom
Tools
- Adobe XD
- Miro
- JustInMind
- Zoom
- Google Docs
- Google Sheets
Trouble in Paradise
Something must've changed recently, because revenue went down 28% between 2018 and 2019, the largest drop since 2003.
Now this isn't the big deal most business-minded people think. Craig isn't in it for the money, but the community. However, our team saw that drop as a hint that the site's community was no longer thriving.
It was time for a rescue mission.
Diagnosing the Problem
Next, we needed to find out why people were leaving Craigslist. We conducted fourteen surveys as well as four Zoom interviews to gain some better insight, grouping the insights based on common themes.
We asked users to rate the approachability of Craigslist on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being very unapproachable and 5 being very approachable.
In hindsight, rather than approachability, a word that was both more specific and more effectively included opinions of veteran users would have been more appropriate.
The majority of people rated Craigslist below a three, and the only person to rate it a four was a battle-hardened Craigslist veteran
There was a key nugget of information lurking behind these low scores:
While the design technically works, people don’t trust it
We’ve entered an age where blue Times New Roman text no longer signals simplicity, but the potential for danger. Where our team expected to find a lack of organization, we also found a lack of trust.
Who’s Writing The (Face)Book Now
When placed next to Facebook Marketplace's sleek, minimal design, Craigslist looked cluttered and chaotic.
Craigslist looks old and lacks design language modernity. This leads to users thinking it's untrustworthy. Due to the interpersonal nature of the buy/sell system, these problems with trust push users toward the competition.
So how do you fix it?
Staying true to Craigslist
Craigslist never wanted to be a “big social media site.” But now those very sites like Facebook are getting in on the secondhand marketplace game. With the vast majority of Craigslist’s community living in its Buy/Sell and Housing sections, a drop in revenue from both sections signals an impending loss of community.
We needed to redesign the website pages, emphasizing a more intuitive information architecture that modernizes the user interface to be welcoming and trustworthy for both new and old users.
Who are we designing for?
Let me introduce you to our three users:
- The Traditionalist, a user who's been on Craigslist since the beginning and loves it as-is
- The Always Online Shopper, a younger user who never used Craigslist due to the site's reputation
- The Facebook Marketplace Maven, who started on Craigslist but migrated to FB Marketplace when Craigslist failed to change with the times
The Facebook Marketplace Maven was our guiding light. By creating an experience for her, we'd also snag the Always Online Shopper. But we needed to remember the Traditionalist. Without people like him, there would be no Craigslist.
With a bit over a week to go, we were off to the design races.
Crafting the Solution
There’s too much
While it’s technically an easy site to navigate because everything is just out, the amount of choices also causes visual fatigue. So we squished some categories together for a cleaner navigation.
Going with the flow
Even though we wanted to add more pages, we wanted to make sure our user flows stayed simple.
Take a Chance on Me
But how to gain trust? Besides the much overdo update, we took a cue from Mercari and added a verification feature. The little checkmark badges in the wireframes below show which sellers have been evaluated by the team at Craigslist.
Prototype 1: From Flying to Faceplanting
This low-fidelity prototype was created to test the bare bones of our design. Fortunately, the gamble of more clicks paid off, with all four users finding the distribution of information intuitive. And while users with ADHD found the initial layout overwhelming, they had no such issues with our prototype.
Check our prototype out for yourself!
Users preferred more screens that were less cluttered
The use of wireframes also mitigated aesthetic bias. If users spent too much time on how different things looked, they might not find the problems.
But find the problems they did.
- Half of users missed the verification symbol
- The filters were flung off into the right corner, drastically removing them from the rest of the main navigation
An Attempted Patch Uncovers a Gaping Hole
To solve the filter issue, we scooted them into the left navigation bar. Only problem was that expanding the drop-down menu pushed all of the secondary navigation below the fold. Now who wouldn't know to scroll down?
The Traditionalist, aka the very user we knew we couldn't forget.
We needed to re-center empathy--the user--before we even thought about continuing. Otherwise we'd continue to lose sight of the flourishing, if a bit dusty, online community Craig created.
Time for Makeup!
When asked what he'd change about Craigslist, one of our veteran users said:
"I wouldn't change a thing!"
And it turns out he's not alone. There's an argument to be made for keeping things exactly how they are.
To help Traditionalists feel more at home, we stuck close to Craigslist's original color scheme as well as the iconic combo of mostly sans serif text with serif text for the listing titles.
Prototype 2: What Doesn't Kill you Makes your Prototype Better
When asked to navigate to an item with a verified seller, all of our testers sailed smoothly until they wrecked on an iceberg: that verified filter. It blended in with the other filter options, and no one knew what it meant other than "cool, green."
What the heck does "verified" even mean?
Users also struggled to navigate from "buy" to "jobs." One user took 60 whole seconds to locate those four little buttons.
Unapproachable No More
When polled about the approachability of our new design, 75% of users rated it above a three. Users who rated lower were those who found our weak points, which were edited for the final iteration. In the future, we hope to continue to test and improve those items, as well as the site as a whole.
The Final (for now) Prototype
Click through it for yourself, or get an overview below!
Next Steps
- Seller Portal: We gave the buyer-facing side an overhaul, but the sellers deserve love too. An updated seller portal will also help attract new users, but this time on the seller side
- Makeover, Continued: Bringing this sleek new branding to product pages, forums, account pages, and more will create that cohesive, modern look
- Verification Expanded: Create a set of standards for seller verification as well as a verification application system in the seller portal
- Tags: Implementing a tag system would let sellers optimize posts without creating confusing, keyword-laden titles and give buyers more ways to find unique items
A New Angle Going Forward
This project proved to be an exercise in empathy, but what if there were a more effective frame? For the next iteration, our team wants to explore the Jobs to be Done (JTBD) approach. JTBD is the gutter guards on the bowling lane of UX, preventing us from rolling off course as we hunt for a solution. Turning the focus from personas and demographic data to "jobs" leads to a product that can transcend technological shifts while also providing a more effective framework for communicating between departments. And as we involve more of the Craigslist team, having that more universal guiding light is sure to prove invaluable.
Some Sappy Takeaways
In the end, it really was all about feeling your feelings. Or, rather, our user's feelings. Without the persona we'd so casually tossed aside, we wouldn't be solving the correct problem. This project also shows how important something as nebulous as "trust" can be, the way it informs user behaviors, and the innovative ways we can win it back.
Check out my wonderful team members
- Patricia Huynh
- Joe Fernandez
- Zach Hojeibane
Articles Mentioned in this Case Study
- How Craigslist's Founder Realized He Sucked as a Manager by Jon Fine
- Craigslist's Unconventional User Experience by Dashiel Neimark
- Craigslist Revenue Drops Sharply in 2019 after Hitting $1 Billion by Stacey Fink and Peter Zollman
