Overview

Afrimart Revamp 

Afrimart is Africa’s first Pan-continental online business-to-business trade platform.



Role

• Product Designer

• Brand Designer

• Content Creation


  
  

Tools

Figma and Adobe Illustrator 



Project Summary

Afrimart is Africa’s first Pan-continental online business-to-business trade platform. This platform is designed to create new business opportunities for African SMEs, manufacturers and general merchants, on the quest for growth and expansion by creating visibility and accessibility between African buyers and suppliers, and a global marketplace. The result is a seamless trade of African goods and services. Afrimart is a world-class, highly robust and scalable platform with a network of trusted partners providing services such as logistics and payment solutions.



The Challenge/Problem

At the core of our business is the desire to increase Africa’s transactional value through the growth of intra-Africa trade. We seek to empower and inspire excellence in African enterprises on the quest to take their businesses to greater heights.

The Solution

Design Process

Discover - Stakeholder interview

I interviewed Stakeholders and Users to learn about the following:

• Why the revamp of the website, mobile and brand identity?

• What do they think Afrimart needs to improve on?

• How was their experience using the old website/app?

• What is the one thing they like about the old design?

Insights:

• Stakeholders decided to revamp the entire platform in total because they discovered it was no longer appealing to their target audience, Hence it doesn't reflect the brand enough as an African B2b e-commerce platform.

• Afrimart needs to improve on the speed and the user experience of the mobile and web.

• Their experience using the old website was mainly navigation and slow response

• One thing that liked about the old design is the display of the feature category section

Define - Persona

Based on the interviews/workshop I set up two personas. I referred to them throughout the entire product development process.

• Created the personas in other to understand the user's needs and experience. This will further help in creating wireframes

• In developing the personas, I used the information obtained from the user research, and I also involved stakeholders.

• The information provided about each persona includes biography, Core needs, Frustrations, personality, payment medium and platform used.

• The personas affected the design because we realized how to become a supplier - that is selling on the platform wasn't so evident. There needs to be a call - to action for that feature that will be glaring. Also making the categories (main categories) more noticeable because the main purpose is either to buy or sell. Hence a user who wants to do both should be able to do both with ease.

Ideation - Site map

Explore - Design

The type of visual style is fresh, and the idea behind the colour scheme is the sight a person sees when the sun is about to rise. I wanted it to have that African feel as well as a modern touch.

The platform was designed for web and mobile (android and IOS). This design helps to reach the business and user goals because users can easily view all the categories which are located at the header, while they scroll down the page, the header with the category is static - making it more noticeable and visible for the user to navigate into. Also if a user wants to become a supplier on the platform they can easily click on sell at the top which directs the user to the guides on how to become a supplier.

Before meets after

Mobile

Web

Tests and what I have learned from this project

Before development, I did a testing round in order to reveal possible usability problems.

The aim of the user tests was to find out if the problems of the initial design had been solved. The test was done at the UI design (high fidelity) completion.

What I have learned from this project especially when it comes to designing B2b and B2c platforms is always better for great user experience to make the categories easily visible. Most users rarely have time to look through the whole website. Hence, if they can easily see it at the top, they can reach their goals easily and quickly with no hassle.