Nassim Hadj benali

Sahal

A simple application that connects retailers and suppliers, allowing shop owners to purchase goods at competitive prices, with full transparency,

plus a free delivery service in less than 24 hours.

Open this case

Project Title:

Sahal

Operating on:

Mobile: Android/ iOS

Tablet: Android/ iOS

Project Description

In this project,  we present “SAHAL” a smartphone application that connects retailers and suppliers, allowing shop owners to purchase goods at competitive prices, with full transparency, plus a free delivery service in less than 24 hours.

Client Name:

Yassir Inc., United States

Goal:

Reinvent wholesale for shop/Retailers owners

Client Name:

Fleap Technologies, Paris

Location:

United States

Project Date:

Jan 2021

Role:

Secondary User research, Interaction, information architecture, Visual Design, Prototyping, overall Art Direction. Within a team of seven; two front-end developers and two back end and a product manager.

Timeframe:

6 months

Understand

How might we relieve shop owners and retailers from the hustle of ordering their stock ?

Problem statement

Shop owners face many challenges sourcing goods, from finding the best prices to building reliable supplier relationships. Without a streamlined solution, they spend too much time negotiating, verifying quality, and coordinating deliveries.

Goals

  • Connect retailers to suppliers
  • Display a wide range of products in one place and with stable and transparent prices
  • retailers can access all the history of his spendings and keep track of his inventory
  • 24 hours delivery

Challenges

A diverse age and language group: some speak French, many Arabic, and others are bilingual. Older adults have low digital literacy. Offer a broad range of products and information.

Research & Analyse

“ To better understand the process in Algeria, on top of surveys, the team undertook careful observations of retailers going through the process of ordering their merchandise stock”

Personnas

We began with the creation of a general personna, from which we extracted three personas based off different common user needs:

private shop owner

Age: 30 - 60 years old

Low digital literacy

Has very little knowledge about business management

User Journey Map

Based off of the personas, my team and I created a consumer journey map that reflected the goals, feelings, and concerns of a user who would order merchandise in wholesale in Algeria.

By examining the journey map, we were able to locate identify the points of crisis within the user's journey, the process is tedious which prevents the retailer to achieve his business goals.

Ideate & Decide

“best case scenarios we had, the retailer has a stable contact with his supplier, but the process remains tedious and uncertain”

In order to determine the final flow of the ordering process, we have broken down the process to 3 steps:

Before / After

User story map

The process is intertwined and complex

  • Look for suppliers
  • contact one or many
  • has to memorize the list of products
  • Either gets delivered with no time frame

Or goes to grab it himself which is quite a loss for the business owner because he has to close down.

After

New User story map

The process is clearly less tedious

  • The onboarding is done only once
  • Products are gathered in one place with all their prices
  • controle over the order with the ability to edit, add or remove articles instantly
  • The retailer is now able to track his delivery status.

Design process highlights

  1. Onboarding

The team chose OTP login for onboarding since many users had low digital literacy and often stopped using the app if they forgot their password.

In order to determine the final flow of the ordering process, we have broken down the process to 3 steps:

  • Design system

Français

عربية

Français

عربية

1

Language switch

During surveys it turned out around 66% of retailers used arabic on their phones and 34% preferred the french language.

a toggle was designed to switch languages easily throughout the whole process of registration.

The user has the ability to change the langue in the settings later on.

1

2

المعلومات الشخصية

معلومات المحل

1

2

المعلومات الشخصية

معلومات المحل

2

Progress indicator

In order to complete registration the user has to fill minimum information about his business for us to collect data and

a progress bar is designed to inform the user that the registration process is in two steps only.

Design process highlights

  1. Ordering

We optimised the order flow despite the challenge of the supplier's vast product range, making it easier for users to find what they need.

We first created a small database with all the categories and subcategories of products in order to group products in much fewer categories, with a set of subcategories displayed in tabs

Start

End

Products

by category

Products by brand

Product details

Product details

Product search

in-category

Product list

1/3

View in cart

3/3

Validation

2/3

Delivery

Views Product

adds Similar products

Adds product

Chooses

Category

/ brand

Adds product

Adds product

3

1

4

To reduce cluttering the list of products was divided into smaller sections and distinctive colors were assigned to each category

Each category icon is composed of two parts:

  • A subtle gradient background
  • An isolated representative product holding approx. 60% of the icon height
  • approx. 33% negative space for breathing.

Category icons

2

18 px

W: 106 px

H: 120 px

Background: White

Padding

Top: 24px

Bottom: 24 px

Sides: 12 px

Brand icons

Logos should be square and cropped to the edges

Main Card: The user is able to add products on the go while they are scrolling. The button is a two-state button, steppers are displayed and the user is able to choose the desired quantity.

Promotion Card: We wanted the user to quickly distinguish products in sale.

SOLD OUT Card: The user can be notified about the availability of a specific product when sold out.

Product cards

4

8 px

12 px

12 px

8 px

4 px

4 px

8 px

Packshot

33%

outerRadius (16 px)

Gap (8 px)

innerRadius (8 px)

- =

16 px

Product info

Call to action

A horizontal scrollable list of tabs for easy navigation inside a category. The user no longer needs to leave the screen in order to change the subcategory.

Sub categories as tabs

Eau Minérale

Boissons Gazeuse

Jus

Produits laitiers

3

The challenge was to display both brands and categories of products in one screen.

Categories alone were about 60 in the beginning, let alone the number of brands in stock.

The permanent tab switcher comes in handy for the user to look for products by category but also by brands.

Main Tab Switcher

1

32 px

16 px

16 px

16 px

8 px

8 px

Par Catégorie

Par Marque

Up