The Big Samasya

Ajio Business becomes Apka Apna Partner?

In India, B2B endeavours were not tech-driven before Covid. It was the need to digitize things and help people with their dhanda that AjioB2B took up as a problem to solve for Bharat. Now it's relatively easy to build an app for the tech-savvy generation but how do you build it keeping the older, non-tech-friendly generation as your core audience?
We built it keeping our users at the centre of this app. We thronged to the markets of India where you can see the dhanda, where hisaab is kept in khaatas and where business deals are made because of the rishta.My responsibility however was taking charge of the Visual system of the app and setting a direction that would go on to be a delightful experience for our users.

How did we arrive at the solution?

So we started off with a perception survey to try and understand the brand perception of various stakeholders in the system. How did people view Ajio Business, this was most important to crack and then we gradually went about developing the possible illustration style that would have the mithaas of lassi every time someone opened the app as a part of the onboarding experience.

( P.S. I was the visual lead in the project between sept 2021 to December 2022. Post this Ajio Business vertical has been restructured owing to business decisions. Now the domain falls under JioMart and is only used for the backend known as the VMS(Vendor Management System) )

The Pitch

The final walkthrough

Here is the screen recording of the entire onboarding for a new user on to Ajio Business platform or for a logged out user who hasnt accessed the system for more than 2 months.

Lekin time nahin hai itna padhne ka!

The onboarding flow of-course is skippable for both or new users and logged out users. These illustrated on boarding screens offer a window to feel connected to people like the tier 2 tier 3 traders themselves. They also talk about the extensive fleet of Sales Officers who handhold the retailers every step of the way. Most importantly we also talk about the hush- hush topic of "Credit" because apno se nahin mangoge to kaha mangoge.

The animated splash screen however shows up every time you open the app. It's like a curtain for us to load all the in-app magic for our retailers.

Here is a simulation of how the experience would feel

new user onboarding experience.mov

The Results

33.2%

reduction in drop off rates .

This was the combined onboarding drop- off reduction for self onboarding and assisted onboarding.

21%

increase in app downloads .

This is the success metric with a monumental number of app downloads and also a better play store rating.

18%

improvement in design documentation .

Armed with Miro we did spend 2 days perfecting our documention that resulted in far less back forth between the DEV team and the design team

Deep dive on the splash screen concept

Ajio Business prides itself as "Apka apna Partner" which loosely translates to your own partner. This concept is based on the metal shutters opening to showcase the shop. The shops resemble the small mom&pop stores across all our cities. Opening the shutter meant opening the shop. That's exactly what we helped retailers do every day. We supplied a multitude of categories like apparels, home, footwear etc. helping them keep shops open. This was our splash screen that would show every time you opened the app. We kept it under 1.5 seconds that felt like whoosh and a woah!

poor network scenario

We understand that our app is being used by retailers and S.O's (Sales Officers). These Sales Officers are always on the move so they often face poor network conditions. Hence we designed the poor network error message.

The empty states

This was something we were passionately working towards. So we believe empty states don't have to mean the end of a journey. It's a redirection and some handholding for our users.

What you see here is an "Empty bag" screen. Very natural for our users to stumble upon when they are new or exploring the app.

So instead of leaving it at " Your cart is empty ", we followed it up with a body copy. This way we could showcase the variety of products we have with us and the retailer doesn't have to stare at an empty bag.

Now coming to the illustration, we studied our competitors and other Ecomm and Quick commerce apps. We wanted to put the desi spin on it. So nothing better than the "Dori" bag. A household staple for when people go to the bazaar. The hooks with the little blue pottery tiles that many houses have double up as plastic bag holders and key holders.

Also, we kept personalisation in mind and wanted to introduce vernacular as a language for our apps. The copy has been changed to "Your Bag is Ekdum Khaali!" (Hinglish).

The most frustrating screen that I have to encounter has to be this. The wifi dipping already makes people furious and imagine that happening when you are in the middle of a transaction. That is a BUMMER! So I initially loved CRED's approach of having a game. I wanted to even have a game. But Business and our development teams requested the idea to be parked. So I designed an animated screen. The idea was "no signal" A phrase I have heard in my childhood across households. The cable would drop bombarding the CRT TV with these alien colours and finally fade into the marching black ants screen.

The copy also is not patronising but humble and confident. We let our customers know it's just a hiccup and all they need to do is turn on the internet to start shopping again. This was consciously chosen as a lot of shopkeepers, SO's often rely on their internet over wifi.

Check out my other works for JIO PLATFORMS

AJIOGRAMAjiogram

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