Building the
Leegolu marketplace

Currently in Africa, there are a number of online classifieds ads companies covering critical niche markets like cars, properties and jobs. One big giant horizontal in this game is Jiji.ng. I joined a tech team in March 2023 building an online marketplace specifically designed for the West African target market. Due to confidentiality reasons, I shall withhold key ideas regarding this project.

The Challenge

My client approached me in February 2023 with one objective. To develop a product that would rival existing classified ads businesses in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa. As the tech team was under pressure, the entire development project timeline was set to five months with a 2 week delivery period set for delivering an initial design.

Timeline February 27th - March 18th.

My Role

As the product designer for the Leegolu app, my role was to conduct research, ideate & design, prototype & test the application. I also liaised with the development team, aiding them in completing this task within the set timeline.

Defining Our Target Market

It was crucial for us to determine three things before moving on with the design of Leegolu: who our users really are, what technologies they are currently using and what challenges they are facing. To gain insight to this, I ran in-depth analysis on platforms of our competition. My research concentrated on the following key business metrics: audience demography, user interests, traffic sources, average time spent on the site, and which platforms had a better user engagement. I also looked at the features those websites currently have and how they influence conversion. At the end I aggregated each platforms market share, made a list of opportunities that were present for us and crafted our ideal range of users.

Empathy Maps

Insights into the mindset, needs, and expectations of our target users.

The Approach

After assessing the needs and pain-points of our target users and understudying their behavior online. The next big question was how to go with solving them. The fact that current classified ad companies were already clinching so firmly to our user base hinted me that the only way to becoming a worthy competition was solely through innovation. I made a list of possible features that our users would value as reflected by my research. I shall keep these features confidential until a later date.

The Flow

It was now time to start organizing the data that had been gathered up to this point. I first created several flows on paper before switching to Figma Jam to polish my drafts.

Wireframes

The Leegolu interface might have been designed in a variety of ways, but after spending hours drawing out many options, I chose to go with this. I started creating the wireframes using Figma.

Look & Feel

As soon as my wireframes were complete, I started defining my designs. I started by making the homepage, showed it to the team, and then I made all of the UI elements. After these were complete, I started creating the pages and modals.

Prototype

Bringing the entire system together at this stage meant a lot to the team. The developers now armed with a working prototype presented a demo in just a couple of weeks.