Service Safari: Selling online and sending items with Vinted and Yodel Store to Door
A bout of procrastination in the past week meant I cleared out my wardrobe with the hope of selling some clothes online. I’ve used Vinted before and have generally found it straightforward so thought I would use this. Like any service there is opportunity to improve so I thought I would do a little service safari style write up. I hope it helps others who are thinking about service delivery and user journeys.
Background:
When I sell an item using Vinted, I need to wait for the buyer to make payment. Once they do this the Vinted platform selects the appropriate courier service and sends me a shipping label. I don’t know how Vinted makes this decision, but there are typically differences depending on whether people have selected to collect their parcel from a locker, or have it sent directly to their house. As a seller I have no visibility of the buyer’s choice.
The shipping label is visible to me in the app and is also sent to my email address so I can download, print, and attach it to my package.
Typically there are two types of shipping labels (and actually the second isn’t really a label even though the app treats it in the same way. We will come back to this later).
- I get sent an InPost shipping label, it has the address that the package is going to, logistics information and a barcode. I use the barcode at the lockers to register that I’ve sent the parcel and open a locker to drop my package off in.
- I get sent a barcode and I need to take the item to a local Yodel drop off point (usually within a local shop, or petrol station) and show the people working there this so that they can register that I’ve sent the parcel and take it.
I’m going to be taking about what I experience as a user when encountering option 2.
User journey:
- At home
I’m feeling really happy because I’ve just sold quite a few items and I’m looking forward to some spare cash, but as I’ve sold a few things, staying on top of the items and the correct shipping labels is a little tricky.
Vinted uses a chat style interface that it calls ‘Inbox’. This prioritises user to user communication over selling functionality. A ‘ chat’ with another user can include any or all of the following:
- questions about items from a buyer (chats include things like requests for measurements or sizing),
- monetary offers for items from a buyer (users can offer a price below the listed price so that a price can be negotiated),
- purchase notifications from Vinted (updates appear in this chat view when someone has bought an item and paid for an item)
- shipping labels from Vinted (this tells me the delivery provider and provides the information that I need to use to send an item)
- delivery updates from Vinted (update notifications such as confirmation that the package has been sent, tracking information, confirmation of delivery)
- feedback from Vinted (I get a notification when a user gives feedback about the item or sale).
All of these are presented in a single interface. This means I can have multiple conversations happening about the same item at once.
Because it is also a place for notifications, Vinted uses functionality to float the newest interaction to the top. This means that key information quickly falls down the view (especially if you are selling a lot of items) and you need to scroll and search (using a small thumbnail image) to identify what each ‘chat’ is about.
To manage sending all of the packages this I plan to print each shipping label for each sold item and attach it to the package one-by-one, to make sure I’ve remembered them all. I’ll then put all the locker packages together and all the Yodel packages together.
Generally I don’t like selling one thing at a time because the effort of packaging, printing labels and taking a single item to a drop off feels disproportionate for the value of the items that get sold. So I like to list a lot in one go, and take as many packages at a time, so that it feels like a worthwhile use of my time. I am busy and generally my time isn’t very flexible as I’m usually working a 9–5.
I don’t have a normal A4 printer, but I have a small thermal printer with sticky paper labels (called a Phomemo) that I was bought a few years ago as a present — this is what I use to print labels.
I use my phone for everything so I download one shipping label and either open it in the app or in my email, I’m pretty indisciminate about which I choose (and you’ll see why this is a problem later).
I’ll screenshot and crop the image to remove any of the information that isn’t needed. This will mean I have a cropped photo in my camera roll that I can pull into the Phomemo app. I do this one at a time otherwise I get confused and I’m terrified of attaching the wrong label to the wrong item.
The Phomemo app is not really designed for this kind of thing (generally they are used to print photos or small icons/labels for journaling) but I make it work. I upload the image and make it as big as possible so that it fits the width of the label. I then print this off and add it to the package to make it easier when I get to the drop off.
I follow these steps again and again for each parcel.
2. At the drop off
Once I have a few packages I take them to the drop off point at a BP garage in my town. I don’t drive, so I wait until my husband is off to Sainsbury’s and get him to give me a lift on his way. This might mean there is a delay to sending packages which makes me anxious as you have a set number of days to send your item before the transaction is cancelled by Vinted.
When I get to the garage it is fairly busy, it’s not clear where to go so I go to the till and get told to move to the side, there is no visible signage for the Yodel service. The garage appears to be family run, and busy. The staff prioritise people paying for petrol and when I’m sending things I encounter frequent delays as the person helping me stops to serve a customer. I’m also stood close to the door between the area behind the tills and the main area; other staff members come through regularly and need to ask me to move so that they can get past. Generally this set up makes me feel like I am getting in the way.
The staff member has a hand-held scanner with a screen, which is connected to a label printer behind the till. They need to scan the barcode so that their printer can print the label and they can attach it to my package.
I have 6 packages and show the first to the member of staff, who is an older lady. She struggles to get the machine to scan the barcode. I am holding the package in different lighting and positions to try and help, but it doesn’t work. We try a different package and relatively quickly this works, she prints and attaches the label and then throws my package on the floor with a lot of other packages. She scans another package, and prints the label but doesn’t attach it, she throws the package on the floor with the others, I assume she will attach the label later.
An older man who works in the shop comes over and inspects the first parcel and tells me that the printing of the barcode:
- isn’t clear enough,
- I have stretched it (I haven’t as Phomemo holds aspect ratio, and actually I do know what I’m doing in that respect) and,
- the lines aren’t clear enough for the system to scan.
But that doesn’t explain why some packages work and others don’t. It also doesn’t explain why the parcels I took to the drop-off lockers all work without a hitch, so i’m reluctant to believe it is my little printer. Still I don’t want to be a pain so I say I’ll go home and reprint all the labels to make sure they are clear.
2. Back at home
At home, I have to open all of the parcels as I can’t remember what item is in which parcel. It’s annoying and a waste of packaging material, but I need to do it to be able to identify the right item in the app and get the barcode again. I do this and get my husband to take me to the drop off again the next day.
3. At the drop off (attempt 2)
I take my repackaged items back to the garage, my husband drives me on his lunchbreak, they all have new printed barcodes and I’ve even printed them twice to really make sure that it is big and clear enough.
Unfortunately the barcodes still don’t scan.
Each includes a short code (made up of numbers and letters) with the instruction that if the barcode doesn’t work this can be used instead. I ask multiple times for the staff member to try this but they are reluctant — they say it doesn’t work. Eventually they try but after putting the code into the handheld device, it won’t let them submit it, the button on the screen won’t press and submit it, none of us have a clue why.
They tell me that if I have the barcodes on my phone screen that they can use this instead, but it will take me ages to go back through all of my screen-shotted images or through the app to find the right one for the right item, so I go home and plan to find the screenshots for the remaining packages so that I can show them my screen when I return.
4. At home (again)
I search through all photos and cross reference the short codes with the screen shots, deleting any that I’ve successfully sent and leaving only those remaining. I add those to the favourites folder in my photo app so that I can access them quickly when I go back to the garage.
5. At the drop off (attempt 3)
The next day my (now pretty annoyed) husband takes me back to the garage on his lunch break. When I arrive the older man laughs at me and the older woman looks anxious. I tell them triumphantly that I’ve got all the screenshots on my phone so it should all be fine now!
I’m feeling hopeful, but the first package still doesn’t scan. Neither does a second one.
I’m now really frustrated. I ask why this is still happening and I’m getting close to losing my cool with the people in the garage. The older man tells me I could use a different service, but I can’t because Vinted has selected this one. He says I could use a different store but that’s not really possible for me and what’s to say they won’t have the same problems? He shrugs and laughs, but this is money I’m due to have in my pocket and people who are expecting parcels who will be annoyed, it’ll also mean I get poor feedback scores if I don’t send the items in time.
Finally a younger woman who works in the garage comes to help, she looks at the screenshots and tells me that the problem is because they were taken while my phone was in dark mode. The scanner isn’t clever enough to understand that the black borders on the barcode aren’t actually a part of the barcode. So I need to turn on light mode (embarrassingly she tech supports me through this because I can’t remember how) and then find the barcode so they can scan it.
The only problem is I still have 4 packages and an interface which makes it hard to track down which is which, so I need to go home and do this. I’m anxious because I’m running out of time to get these sent, and a buyer messages me. I’m also annoyed because my phone is now in light mode and that is hideous to use.
At this point I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to get this right, I’m frustrated and feeling highly unlikely to want to sell anything else for a while.
What I would do next (if I were Vinted or Yodel)
There are some key areas in this journey that I would focus on.
- Selling and sending multiple packages at once / taking multiple packages at a time to a drop-off.
I would seek to understand how regularly this kind of behaviour is seen.
I sense that the majority of users are maybe ‘passive sellers’ who upload items and wait until they make sales, and may be less impacted by the need for multiple trips to a drop off point. Maybe I am an edge case in that regard.
However, looking at rates of uploading and rates of sales per user would help Vinted to identify and understand how the platform is used by sellers with a more ‘active, short-term’ behaviour like mine. This, in turn, may help to identify possible improvements to the user journey which could benefit all users (and if not, help them to decide it it would be worth designing a specific journey for users like me).
For example, might moving completed sales into a different view help users to find and track key information about deliveries? Would differentiating between user-to-user and Vinted-to-user communications simplify the experience and help to make things clearer for users?
Perhaps the ability to search by tracking code or delivery address would help? Would directing people to the web version in some instances help? (Reader, I have only just realised that there is a web version).
2. Users who use devices in ‘dark mode’.
Undertaking further research with drop-off points to understand how regularly they see this issue, if they recognise this issue at all, and understanding more about how they troubleshoot with their customers would help Yodel to understand what the impact of this is. It may help Yodel to develop resources or training for their drop-off locations which alleviate stress for both the customer and the store staff.
If I were Vinted I’d seek to build in testing in dark mode to my usability testing, though I suspect that as there is a handoff to a delivery partner (Yodel) that Vinted don’t know that this is an issue and that even if they did, as burden is largely felt by Yodel’s drop-off locations, that the incentives to implement changes to support dark mode may not be top priority. If I were thinking about solving this for users, I would consider if actually it would be best to push people to using the emailed shipping voucher, which is generally a PDF with a white background, maybe removing the shipping labels view from the app altogether?
While we are talking about it, you might be interested to know that around 80% of Android users use dark mode (more here).
3. The user experience of multi-service hubs
We are incleasingly seeing shops and garages like this one becoming multi-purpose hubs for services. When BP are considering the experiences of people buying petrol, they are unlikely considering that this includes a carwash, vape point of sale, a costa coffee machine, a Yodel drop-off and delivery pick up service and more. Each of these has uses different infrastructure, requires different relationships, has different systemsand timescales and more. And yet! All this has to be managed by a single small team.
I think it makes a lot of sense that this small team are not going to be interested in becoming experts in how a piece of a service works, because they have so many other things to juggle, and they’re certainly not going to be interested in troubleshooting with a customer who doesn’t even know how to get her phone out of dark mode, not when the red bull needs restocking (reader, I would have worked it out, just not while frustrated in a BP garage).
So then this begs a question, how can you work better with franchisees considering taking a service to help them understand the impact on their day to day business?
(NB: BP actually uses a franchise model, so it’s ultimately down to each franchisee which services they offer in the space, I get that, this is just an example)
Conclusion
I think this demonstrates the need for service design and how, from a user perspective it doesn’t matter where responsibility for each part of the journey sits. My experience of Vinted is my experience of the man laughing at me in a BP garage, and my experience of Vinted is the experience of a handheld scanner not working properly, in both examples the two are inextricably linked. So that service view is reputationally important.
About me
I’m a service designer with more than 15 years building experiences and helping others to build services. I’m currently looking for a new role. Find out more about me here:
NB: There is a lot of information out there about what a service safari is, but not much about how best to write one up, so I’m creating my own structure and approach here. It’s deliberatively narrative in style as it’s based on limited background understanding of how the service operates behind the scenes.
Please let me know if you have any examples or suggestions for how this might be improved, I’d very much welcome them.
