Help’n’Trade RELAUNCH thanks to your feedback!
Summer was full of sweat, but not because of the hot weather here in Switzerland, but because of our efforts in developing an amazing platform… and it is all based on your feedback!
Let’s go back a few months, sometime around April 2021. We wanted to create a simple, fast and transparent way to purchase local products. We put ourselves into the shoes of a local business owner who has an amazing product, say “homemade muffins – made with love” and wants to tell the world about it, but has no idea how to sell online.
And so, we studied, researched current options on the market, spoke to a ton of local business owners, and set ourselves a goal: “Make buying and selling products as simple and transparent as possible”. Our mission was clear: develop a prototype of a new e-commerce experience, test it and improve it during the summer. The prototype we created initially was very basic, but it was enough for people to play around with and tell us what is really important as a business as well as a consumer. We started to cycle between design, code and user testing in endless circles and here we are today!
So, what can you do now as a business owner after the Help’n’Trade relaunch?
- Seamlessly open a web shop for your products,
- accept digital payments as credit cards right from the beginning,
- put up all the information about each individual product, incl. FAQ section, product video, price “on sale” and much more,
- define delivery options for your consumers,
- have a full transparency over all orders, their status and what must be done next
- have a great overview over the financial success of your webshop,
- gather feedback from the customers,
- receive an e-mail notification about order status and the next step,
- present additional information about the business that show the soul of the business,
- easily communicate with your customers.
And what about being a consumer on Help’n’Trade?
- No more lengthy onboarding, everything should be clear now in the moment you land on our platform,
- find attractive offers in just seconds,
- order products seamlessly and in just few clicks,
- have a full transparency over all orders, their status and what must be done next,
- easily communicate with the business,
- receive an e-mail notification about order status and the next step,
- review each order.
Want to know even more about our product update? Read the below summary for more information:
Redesigned Home Page
Home page, or the first page you land on when you visit our platform (https://helpntrade.com), has been totally redesigned! The focus is on you the consumer of local products or services. We wanted to make it easier for you to find interesting offers around you but also to open a door for you to learn more about us, our mission and how you can be part of our movement for a sustainable future.
Our current update of the Home page provides:
- Visual redesign
- Search functionality
- Spotlight on local products and services of interest
- Channel to learn a captivating story of a local business
- Section to learn how does opening a webshop with Help’n’Trade works
- Section to learn about our mission, team and our effort for sustainable e-commerce
- Section to reach out to us
Digital payments with verified businesses
We partnered with Stripe (LINK), the world’s leading payment provider, to enable purchase of goods via Help’n’Trade with digital payments. Specifically, we enabled purchase of goods with leading credit cards providers like Maestro, Visa etc.Digital purchases are enabled only if the business is verified, however we made it so that the verification is also done via Stripe and so it takes only few minutes from signup for a business to start accepting digital payments… that is, if the business is legitimate of course, which you can now recognize by a neat badge next to the businesses profile on Help’n’Trade.
Our current update of the digital payments provides:
- Totally new and lean process for consumers to purchase goods with credit cards
- Direct connection between verification and digital payments receiving on the businesses end
Financial Dashboard
It costed us a lot of effort, but we managed to create a financial dashboard and create processes to handle digital payments so that the money flows from the consumer directly to the business. Furthermore, we made sure this is 100% transparent to the businesses and display all the fees and necessary information. No hidden fees.
Our current update of the financial dashboard provides:
- Totally new dashboard displaying financial overview (payments received on the spot and digitally)
- Overview about incoming and outgoing payments
- Status of the payment processing
- Overview of the credit card fees
- Each transaction
Product page incl. price “on sale”
Consumers want to understand what they are buying. Small local businesses want to show the maximum about their precious products. We are here to provide both.Each product on Help’n’Trade has now its own page. It includes all the important information and businesses are free to upload any information they wish. That also includes putting a product “on sale”. On top of it, each product page is equipped with all the SEO so that the products are discoverable also via search engines (Chrome, Edge, etc.) and outside of Help’n’Trade.
Our current product update of the product page provides:
- Picture upload
- On Sale price
- Dimensions of product
- Origin
- Product video
- FAQ section
Order overview
When a product or service is ordered, both business and consumer want to have a full transparency about the process, information exchanged and what has actually been ordered. We designed an order overview, which is simple, but also easy to navigate, update and use… and of course very transparent to both parties!
Our current update of the Order overview provides:
- Lean process of purchasing and handling information exchange
- Information on delivery of the order
- Status of payment processing
- Cart overview with all the useful information about the order
- Review received/given for that specific cart
Additional life improving updates
- Square pictures of products
- Removed entire onboarding for easier access
- Simplified navigation between screens
- Businesses may now share their professional links in their business profiles
- Improved business dashboard
If you have any comments to our newest update, if you have any questions, or you just want to chat with us. Reach out to us via our social media channels. We’ll be very happy to get in touch with you!
