Design & development studio
The design of the Martamart online store began on 21 March 2019 and carried on as more sellers joined. The Niasa team worked on the user interface, the user experience and the development of this project, and every part of it was designed and built bespoke.
The numbers that mattered to the client — not the ones that look good.
Agreed with the client before anything was drawn.
Everything that was handed over at the end.
Martamart had started on an off-the-shelf theme; it held up to about thirty sellers, and past that every search took several seconds. More serious than the slowness, no seller had a panel of their own, and every price change had to go through the central team.
The platform was written from the ground up in Laravel: every seller has their own stock, prices and orders, the basket is shared, and settlement is calculated automatically at the end of each period. Search and filters moved onto a separate index so a growing catalogue would not slow them down.
The product card was designed so the seller's name, the delivery time and the price can all be read at once — the three things a purchase decision in a marketplace rests on. The seller panel speaks the same visual language as the site, so nothing has to be learned twice.
The things this product does now that it could not do before.
Stock, price and delivery time are in the seller's own hands; the central team only approves a product the first time.
An index separate from the sales database, with suggestions as you type and filters that show how many results each choice holds.
A buyer collects from several sellers into one basket; behind the scenes the order splits into several shipments, each tracked separately.
Daily sales, best sellers and the amount due for settlement, with no report to request from support.
Each seller's commission and payout are calculated at the end of the period and handed to the finance team as a list ready to pay.
More than two thirds of visits came from mobile, so the card layout, the filters and the payment steps were designed for the small screen first.
The route the work actually took, with the time each stage needed.
An audit of the previous system, measurements of where it was slow, and conversations with six sellers about the work they had to do by hand every day.
Designing the data model for seller, stock, order and settlement; this was the stage at which we decided to split an order into shipments.
The product card, the product page, the basket and the seller panel. The product card was rewritten three times before the seller's name found its place.
Building the store, the seller panel and the central panel on Laravel, along with the search index and the migration of the existing product data.
Onboarding the sellers in stages, training them on the panel, and watching the first two weeks with small daily corrections.
The tools this project stands on, and still runs on today.
The platform now runs with several times the sellers it had on day one, and the Martamart team manages the products and categories itself; our part is limited to support and building new capabilities.
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