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Tiktok Shop:
Seller Mission Optimization

Responsibility: Leading user interview to understand sellers' journey, motivations and bottlenecks

OVERVIEW

Tiktok Shop is a new e-commerce platform in Thailand, launched only in the last two years. Tiktok Shop is still trying to grow the number of sellers on the platform and making sure that these sellers are successful.

 

Seller Mission is Tiktok Shop's tool that helps grow sellers' business at scale. Tiktok Shop designs and sends sellers missions or tasks that can drive sellers' business growth. Sellers can choose to accept any missions they receive and get rewards that can further boost their business upon completing each mission.

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MY ROLE

During my management trainee rotation in Incubation team, I was responsible for managing 4 contractors to cold-call sellers and raise awareness on Seller Mission. I soon discovered that:
 

  • Cold-calling sellers may not be the most scalable way to improve the acceptance and completion rate of Seller Mission

  • Our team still lacks knowledge about the user journey of Seller Mission.


My goal is to gain insights for improving the effectiveness, the acceptance and completion rate of Seller Mission.

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   Thus, I led a series of user interviews to understand sellers' journey, motivations and bottlenecks.

   Then, I utilized the findings to formulate actionable recommendations to optimize the effectiveness of Seller Mission. 
 

 

*Due to the confidentiality nature of this project, I will only be providing a broad explanation of the processes and key findings, excluding most of the quantitative data. Please reach out to veerin.bus@hotmail.com for more information. 

METHODOLOGY

WHY USER INTERVIEW?

We want to find out:

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  • Why sellers mission currently has low acceptance and completion rate?

  • Why sellers are not interested in Seller Mission?

  • For the few who are interested,  why do they still not accept or complete missions?

 

As a result, I chose the interview method as it can quickly help us understand the "why" behind sellers' decisions when interacting with Seller Mission

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INTERVIEW DESIGN

My team and I conducted a quick 10-minute interview with 45 sellers through cold-calling. 

 

When I talked to sellers,

 

  • I gave the interview a conversational tone, switching between giving sellers' knowledge about Seller Mission and asking my research questions. 

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  • I emphasized to sellers that the insights gained from this interview will be used to improve their overall experience on Tiktok Shop.

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This approach helped address 2 main challenges:

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  • Most sellers distrust cold-calling from Tiktok Shop, as phone scammers claiming themselves
    to be from Tiktok Shop is prevalent across Thailand. 
     

  • Most local, small-scale sellers are not used to committing to pre-scheduled interview times. Many do not consider selling on Tiktok Shop their main work, so they prefer providing quick feedback to us on the spot instead of setting aside a significant amount of time to discuss Tiktok Shop. 

 

This interview design results in

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  • Successfully built trust with sellers
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  • Efficiency:

    • Saves sellers' time and effort while generating useful insights to quickly make key suggestions for improving sellers' mission.

    • Helps provide immediate advice to sellers who are struggling with the platform or Seller Mission

SELLER PROFILE

I separated the 45 sellers whose revenue falls within the small-but-growing range into two groups 

Those who did not accept missions

Those who accept,
but did not complete the missions

I focus on 4 main types of missions, which include tasks that are most crucial to driving sellers' business growth
 

Upload products 

Post Short Videos

Do livestream

Activate Affiliate feature

KEY INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

Through this interview, I aim to understand the motivation and bottlenecks in each stage of the user journey of Seller Mission. Here are the broad questions I designed to guide the interview:

AWARENESS

  1. Are the majority of sellers aware of Seller Mission?

2. What are the best communication channels to raise awareness on Seller Mission?

ACCEPTANCE

  1. Why do sellers accept / do not accept missions?

COMPLETION

  1. Why did sellers complete / not complete missions?

2. What motivate sellers to do missions?

2. After accepting, how committed sellers are with completing missions?

3. What types of missions are sellers most and least interested in?

KEY FINDING

Issue 1: Awareness issue and communication channel

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 More than half of sellers interviewed are unaware of Seller Mission​

We discovered sellers’ most preferred communication channel through the interview and that there is a lack of communication efforts on this channel

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Actionable recommendation:

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  • Drive awareness through optmizing Seller’s preferred communication channel

  • Redesign the copywriting of communication materials to communicate messages that aligns with sellers' interests in Seller Mission

Issue 2: Mismatched between Tiktok Shop and Sellers’ expectation of Seller Mission

While Tiktok Shop wants Seller Mission to help sellers learn about all the ways they can grow their business, beginner sellers simply want to learn one or two most familiar and efficient ways to grow.

Sellers are motivated to do Seller Mission if the mission has attractive rewards, can drive business growth through increasing sales or store visibility, and do not require too much effort from sellers

The interview identified types of missions and rewards that sellers are interested in the most and the least, and why they are interested and not interested in certain missions and rewards.

Actionable recommendation:

  • Redesign a more flexible Seller Mission flow and requirement that allows sellers to choose missions that are most relevant, doable, and effective for them

  • Utilize A/B testing on Mission Name and Description copywriting, to make sure that it clearly communicates the value of each missions in growing sellers’ business

Issue 3: Sellers are not committed to completing Seller Mission

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Sellers considers using Seller Mission as a matter of trial and error, and thus are not very committed to tracking their progress nor completing missions. 

Actionable recommendation:

  • Redesign and utilize A/B testing on reminder message copywriting to help seller be more aware of their Seller Mission progress and improve their completion rate

  • Redesign mission tasks with too high requirement and low impact on Sellers’ growth

SELLER JOURNEY

Scenario: Seller A has recently joined Tiktok Shop and is looking for a way to grow his shop quickly

AWARENESS

ACCEPTANCE

COMPLETION

Step 1:  Sellers learn about Seller Mission by scrolling through the usual place they look for new updates on Tiktok Shop

Step 2:  Sellers feels that the communications messages about Seller Mission touched on their needs and interests 

Sellers check out 
Seller Mission page

Step 1: Sellers see a mission

Step 2: Sellers read its title and description.

Step 3: Sellers feel that the mission has attractive rewards, is beneficial, and completion is a possibility

Sellers accept missions 

Step 1:  Sellers go on with their usual
business operations, not thinking much about the mission they have aceepted

Step 2:  Sellers receive a reminder message suggesting that they are close to completing the mission

Sellers complete mission

OUTCOME

This interview led to a redesign of several Seller Mission, resulting in

Among sellers in growth stage, 14% of sellers who completed

the redesigned missions generated more revenue, from within the range of

only 600-3,000 USD to 3,000-9,000 USD per month

The cumulative number of sellers who accepted and completed at least 1 mission went up by 170% and 190% 

LEARNING

"The design of the interview is as important as the questions asked"

I realized that we can prepare great questions, but still end up with zero insights if we cannot design an interview in such a way that encourage users to participate. 

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Not all users want to participate in user research nor are they willing to sacrifice a couple of hours to give us feedback on our products. So, it's important to make sure that our user research session is efficient and worthwhile of our users' time.

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