Foundational Research:
Understanding Spouse-ly Vendors

@ Spouse-ly (Startup)

During my internship, the CEO sought to understand why military/first responder vendors on Spouse-ly (an Etsy-like marketplace) were not updating their shops. Through in-depth interviews, I identified key pain-points, improving the vendor experience and significantly boosting engagement.

Background & Goals

The CEO needed research-based evidence to decide how to allocate limited resources to improve the Spouse-ly Vendor product amid engagement drop-off.

Stages of the Vendor Experience included:

Challenges

Recruiting

The military/first responder community is guarded and less participatory. The CEO shared receiving survey feedback was an uphill battle.

Solution

Research & Budget Proposal

I proposed in-depth Interviews with a small yet representative sample of vendors & requested a $200 budget to compensate them.

Methodology

By analyzing Shopify Data, I was able to identify target participants that would make a representative sample of the user base.

I recruited via Spouse-ly's Facebook page through a community post.

6 Participants for 50 minute in-depth interviews
- 2 high sales vendors
- 2 average sales vendors
- 1 low sale vendor
- 1 Pilot (For Interview refinement)

Crucial Insights

The first two stages of Spouse-ly's vendor experience caused the most frustration and time consumption for participants.

Stage 1: Setting Up Shop

Despite detailed new shop tutorials, all vendors reached out to customer support for assistance.
They shared it is not technically difficult however tedious (2-4hrs for basic setup).

Stage 2: Running a Shop

Participants found updating inventory or adding products tedious, despite recalling the process.
They expected duplicating products with variants to be easier, not starting from scratch.
Additional glitches were found in processing custom orders.

These stages caused critical vendor drop-off by diverting time from creating products and marketing efforts.

For additional findings, contact sergiozuxr@outlook.com.

Final Impact

Strategic Impact

Research insights directly informed the product development strategy.
Discoveries provided clear, actionable guidelines to prioritize fixes across all stages of the vendor journey.

Stakeholder Collaboration Impact

UXR established itself as a strategic partner to the CEO, driving product research and planning.
UXR fostered collaboration with the Marketing Specialist to communicate immediate improvements for site vendors.

Product Impact

Achieved a significant increase in vendor engagement.

My Learnings

1:1s with key stakeholders set expectations and ensure the most impactful insights are shared at the end of the project.

Leverage previous data to support final findings.

Don’t overthink negative insights discovered; plan a clear delivery with data-backed recommendations.

Foundational Research: Understanding Spouse-ly Vendors

Foundational Research:
Understanding Spouse-ly Vendors