Bridging the Gap: How Vinted merged historical data for a holistic understanding of their second-hand fashion checkout process

About Vinted

Vinted, established in 2008, is the leading customer-to-customer marketplace for second-hand fashion in Europe. With over 70 million users in 21 markets and a €3.5B valuation, Vinted is dedicated to making all consumption sustainable even in verticals like luxury fashion. Arnas Levickas, Senior Product Manager with more than 5 years of experience at Vinted, has worked on a variety of products and currently focuses on optimizing the Checkout area.

Goal: Optimize post-user research analysis

As Arnas and his team explored opportunities to improve the end user's experience of Vinted's Checkout process, they stumbled upon a few roadblocks. They needed user research to understand how they were doing so far and where to focus next. Research on the Checkout area, both anecdotal and from direct conversations with users, had been gathered over the years in plenty—however, collecting data and presenting it in an actionable format are two very different things. To date, user research data wasn’t consumable across the team.

Recognizing the need to consolidate historical data in order to improve the effectiveness of research and prevent duplication of efforts, Arnas began looking for a way to pull historical data into a cohesive view of Vinted's user journey. And as a Product Manager with heaps of high priority tasks to juggle at once, optimization is the order of the day.

"We have a LOT of user research done throughout the last decade, some of it is still being referred to but the rest has fallen into a sort of informational abyss. As a consequence of that, we're sometimes asking questions that have already been answered."

In addition to understanding the need to backtrack and pull old data out of the cupboards, Arnas saw a vital need to make ongoing research visible and useful to his entire team. Vinted has a dedicated research team, and additionally, every Product Manager is involved in talking to customers on a regular basis. This leads to a massive bank of research that’s growing everyday—the importance of analyzing and contextualizing it has never been more crucial.  

Solution: Vinted meets Journey AI

When Arnas was introduced to Journey AI as a selected member of its beta testing program, he had already been working on consolidating data within TheyDo's Service Blueprint templates. As a Product Manager, it was the first time he ventured into these more service-centered frameworks, and he found the Service Blueprint incredibly helpful in mapping out existing systems and interacting elements that form Vinted Checkout. Arnas built a comprehensive view of Vinted Checkout's status quo, focusing on tackling user problem areas between purchase decision > successful order placed.

He hit a stroke of good luck when the opportunity to apply for TheyDo's Journey AI beta program popped up during his mapping process. Journey AI promised to cut mapping time while maintaining high-quality journeys. Arnas seized his chance to finalize Vinted Checkout's service blueprint work and create an actionable database out of Vinted’s historical research in TheyDo. It was immediately apparent what a radical shift Journey AI would be for post-user research analysis.

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The game-changer with Journey AI is that it allows you to instantly visualize user interviews. I can immediately extract the pains and gains of whichever user I’m talking to.

Arnas Levickas

Senior Product Manager, Vinted

Arnas used Journey AI to upload Vinted's historical user research by the handfuls. A project that may have taken months or even years of dedicated analysis and documentation to complete, Arnas leveraged Journey AI’s simple research-to-journey functionality, and formed a visible hierarchy of user insights in a matter of days. A welcome surprise was Journey AI's ability to highlight direct quotes and remove human subjectivity that often interferes with the true sentiment of user feedback.

Arnas was able to leverage Journey AI to map on top of his existing Service Blueprints that he'd been working on, piling valuable data in and getting a more robust blueprint with every AI generation.

"I find the tech fascinating from the standpoint of how much time it can save and how easily and quickly it can extract value from our user interviews. Journey AI will keep us from falling back into the trap of losing track of research."

What's next for Vinted

Armed with years of organized historical data and a multitude of new insights, Arnas is now breaking down silos and inviting other teams and departments into the work. And it's an essential moment to boost visibility and collaboration around user needs.

Vinted is expanding their offer, now running their own shipping company, VintedGo. They were also recently granted their own Electronic Money Institution License and are expanding their payments branch, Vinted Pay. A comprehensive picture of user experience across all of Vinted's verticals will help them remain first-in-class in both their core and expanded verticals.

At a stage where Vinted is making significant expansions to their business, changing their technical architecture and revamping their core user journeys, they're looking to leverage AI to free up time and double down on critical work.

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We are in need of really smart tools to off-load (previously) manual labor and free up the time to focus on what really matters — world class user experience. TheyDo is a really smart tool.

Arnas Levickas

Senior Product Manager, Vinted

Vinted wanted a clearer picture of their Checkout experience research. Now, theydo.