The data dashboard of shows that 35% of quality chat rooms has created within 1 hour,  while this number in the group of one created in 1 - 12 hours is 33%. Besides that, previous research also informed that the quality chat rooms have 85% to make the transactions happen. Therefore, it can be expected that the more quality chat rooms are created within 1 hour, the more transaction will be made. For that reason, to help make transactions happen faster, we must find solutions to transfer users from group 2 to group 1 by researching their chat behaviours and factors affecting their chat experience.

Objective

• To identify factors contributing to the Chat experience, including product components and external ones, then define by performance negatively and positively;
• To explore users' awareness of new features;
• To review the solutions applied in Q3/2022 and evaluate their effectiveness.

Product review - The problem/challenges

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We defined a good chat experience, based on our business model, includes the following characteristics:

• Ensure core use case experience: send and receive messages with absolutely no friction or hiccup. No message loss with minimal delay;
• Enough hygiene features that support buy and sell needs;
• Can help to manage messages properly, especially with Pro Sellers;
• Can help to verify and check the credibility of the other users.

User flow from Ads listing view to Chat conversation

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To understand thoroughly the journey users go through while using chat in r-ecommerce, detailed journeys with screens/stages, decisions and actions were created for the 2 mentioned levels. Accordingly, hypotheses about user problems would be listed by steps respectively.

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After assuming the problems users might have based on the above factors and validating those hypotheses with the data we had, we realized there were 3 biggest problems we were having.

• Our chat system based on ads listing, but 40% of chat room only contained the 1st message from buyers, and no responses from sellers.
• Even we have developed new-released features based on user passive demands, the adoption rate of those features is not over 2%;
• About 18% of users used Call/SMS after creating Chat Room.

Since the first and third challenges are partly affected by users' social behaviors (they are not willing to chat, they prefer to call for immediate responses, etc), the second one seems to be the most critical to study.

There are several reasons can be expected for this situation:

• They didn't know there was this feature;
• They have no need to use;
• Features are hard to use;
• They experienced bugs/faulty during the first-time usage.

Factors that contribute to Chat Experience

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To approach user problems actively and productively, we hyped factors that potentially contribute to Chat experience based on “Extended Affective Technology Acceptance Model (TAM 3)”:

• Perceived usefulness: When a product is useful, it solves a user’s problem OR the design answers an issue that the designer has recognized. Your product should be original and fulfill a need. Does the design bring value to the user’s experience? while evaluating how useful a product’s UX is. Is there an issue that the design solves for the user? Is the design assisting the user in achieving a certain objective?;
• Perceived ease-to-use: It indicates that its design, structure, and purpose are obvious and simple to understand. Is everything in the design easy to find? Is the design’s functioning simply to grasp? Is it possible for users to do certain activities inside the design?;
• Perceived trust: It is important for users’ securities to be protected while using products, especially with r-ecommerce;
• Perceived social influence: Aspects come from users’ personalities, uncontrollable

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Quantitative research to validate user experience on Chat’s features

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1. Methodology: Surveys
2. Participants: Chotot users in “Electronic” and “Second-hand” category.

• Sample size: 384;
• Buyers: 126 (32.8%);
• Sellers: 258 (67.2%)
• Age: various;
• Location: Vietnam;
• Vertical: C2C, ELT;
• Behavior: using Chat within 30 days.

3. Research problems: Users have not used features that we have developed basing on their demands informed by legacy foundation research
4. In the survey, we asked users:

• If they are buyers/sellers and which kinds of goods they are interested in the most, to screening and classify user to groups by products;
• How they rate their Chat experience themselves in the scale of 5;
• We listed all the key features of Chat have been developed, and asked users to choose all features they have used.
• How is their experience with those features from low to high;
• The reasons why they have not used the features they did not choose above, if the reasons were not listed, they can listed themselves.

5. Findings:

• In general, Goods users have satisfied with Chat features quality.
• Almost users have not used features for 2 biggest reasons: they have not had needs to use or they have known about them.
• Core users (who used the most those features) meet the highest ratio of bugs during usages.
• When users experience problems with Chat, they tend to switch to other channels (call/SMS), instead of reporting it.

What should we do next?

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Considering and prioritizing problems to solve, we have decided to develop an internal user feedback collection system, to support us listen user better