TipTech #1: How Bukalapak Developers Managed New Features Amid a Fast Product Cycle

TipTech is a new rubric DailySocial which discusses various tips in product development or startup applications. In this first part, we had the opportunity to discuss with VP of Engineering Bukalapak Ibrahim Arif and VP of Product Design for Bukalapak Joel Sumitro.

In the midst of business competition online marketplace In a very strict manner, there are many things Bukalapak must do to make buyers feel at home. One of the ways to do this is by continuously rolling out product innovations in the application. We ourselves observed several updates being rolled out, for example after features Fun Assault now they are rolling out #MauDitinju and #Maudikode as a voucher distribution mechanism and discount draw.

As a complement, these features must get the right portion and placement so as not to interfere with the main business model. It is this approach that we will discuss, about how the development and product teams maximize app features to increase user traction.

Take advantage framework right

User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) become an important part when formulating a new product. In simple terms, UI is defined as a representation of the product that will be accessed by the user; while UX is the design flow, accommodating the ways in which consumers access the product.

“There are many different paths to take when formulating a UX design for a new feature. The one we've used is framework made by Nir Eyal. In it he pitches the idea that a feature that can create a new habit for a user should have four cycles: triggers, actions, variable rewards, and investment, "explained Joel.

Nir Eyal in the book “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products” describes how products are converted into habits. That is, consumers are conditioned to have an emotional drive to use without having to think long. For example, the success of Instagram, making people come back from time to time without conscious thought to see new photos and scrolltimeline.

trigger or triggers, namely factors that are used as reasons for users to access and use the product. These triggers are divided into two aspects, external and internal. These external triggers, which are assigned to encourage people to enter the launched product, take various forms, for example what is done in Bukalapak by sending quite persuasive notifications to users.

Then internal triggers – these are the most difficult factors related to user experience creation, requiring critical thinking from the product designer. According to Neil, it is said to be successful if it is able to produce persistent negative emotions; then provides a brief relief from that emotion, creating an addiction.

For example, the Serbu Seru feature in Bukalapak, with a relatively very small product price, users can raid selected products. Then the system will do a random draw on each product, until one lucky invader is selected. For those who are less fortunate, the amount given will be returned, either in the form of a balance or the purchase of other items. Very low prices, luck, and attractive product variants take advantage of this emotional factor.

“In the new Maudikode feature that we just launched, the four elements above can be quite felt, especially external triggers strong,” continued Yoel.

For discussion framework This is complete, Neil's book can be used as a reference.

Testing and collaboration

In order to be accepted and have the expected impact, testing is also important. Ibrahim explained that in Bukalapak they use A/B Testing.

"A/B Testing is very important to ensure that the application's UI/UX development has a quantifiable positive impact for users and for conversion funnels our. There are many A/B Testing services and libraries that can be used and integrated with our applications, ranging from free to paid ones," Ibrahim explained.

Collaboration and team management are also a crucial part of improving the quality of UI/UX at Bukalapak.

"For tools to support collaboration in creating designs, we used to use a combination of Sketch, Abstract, and Realtimeboard. But after doing some experiments, we found that Figma can replace these three tools, and can even support better collaboration with teams outside of design ," he continued.

Personalization for users

The increase in traction is also influenced by the user's convenience in accessing the application. For example, regarding the reliability of the application, when accessed it remains fast even though many features are added. In order to keep the application fast, Ibrahim worked around this by separating the application usage patterns, between the read-heavy with which write-heavy.

"Typically customer-facing applications tend to be in use scenarios read-heavy. In such cases, also consider using cache efficient. Also discuss with the business team, for the product, is there a certain time period that is still available? acceptable to serve still data to customers," he explained.

For example, for an application that displays weather data, it might still for a maximum of 20 minutes is still acceptable and can becache for a long period of time.

In addition, currently Bukalapak uses artificial intelligence (AI) technology to build personalization models for its millions of customers. This model can be combined with AI that is used for recommendations in order to assist users in facilitating the shopping experience.

"To build a model like this, we collect billions of data related to the behavior of every customer on Bukalapak, and use that data to train various types of models using machine learning techniques such as model bayesian, neural network, or logistical regression"explained Abraham.