Online auto rates
The new way to generate prices for multiple lanes in one click
Before we start
Nearly 40% of importers only use one logistics provider, which means they're likely missing out on the best available pricing or lane/mode. Freightos gives you the freedom to switch between logistics providers, pairing importers or exporters with variety of different logistic providers.The Freightos marketplace ecosystem sees over one million monthly searches, thousands of shipments, and tens of millions of pricing updates. They put that data to work by providing instant visibility into individual shipment prices, transit time, and forwarder ratings.
The problem
At Freightos there are two different user types: Small-Mid-size buyers (SMB) and Premium buyers (PB).
What are the differences between SMB and PB?
01
Premium buyer ships between 50 to 500 shipments a year while a SMB ships up to 10 times a year.
02
PB’s (e.g. a company or a chain of stores), deliver ongoing, frequently from the same factories to the same warehouse rapidly while SMB’s mostly don’t have consistent shipping lanes.
03
PB ship mostly a few full containers which worth more while SMB’s ship boxes and crates most likely per shipment which is way more costly from the delivery aspect.
So it seems PB can do so much better than SMB. However, the situation is a little different... SMB's GB is more than double compared to PB. An encouraging aspect is that in the last few quarters as can seen below PB's GB increased, so although PB are fewer it seems it's worth to focus on the PB. Less is more :
Small mid-size buyers GB 63.7%
Premium buyers GB 26.3%
Q2 2017
Q3 2017
Q4 2017
Q1 2018
Q2 2018
Q3 2018
Q4 2018
Q1 2019
Q2 2019
Q3 2019
Q4 2019
Q1 2020
[ PB Vs. SMB GB chart ]
It's all about scaleability
Another major difference is that Premium Buyers on Freightos don’t book on their own. They prefer that an account manager book on their behalf. Freightos dedicated an entire team to handle these clients, and until recently this was done manually searching on Freightos lane after lane separately, (speaking to the buyers on the phone and running searches during the call, and later booking shipments). Obviously, this is not scaleable... This case study will present an admin tool of a feature that is an in-house tool, behind the scenes of Freightos, trying to save manual work and time, create multiple searches in parallel and become more efficient.
[ The old excel manual rate index ]
Research
After understanding that it's worth to invest in PB's although they prefer to book shipments via account managers, we still wanted to try and automate the process at least on the admin's side and hopefully to move the PB in this direction.
MEETINGS - The first stage of this project was to meet with all the different stakeholders; Account managers, Sellers team, Freight team, Marketing, R&D and more. Everyone came up with their own issues and requests regarding the shipping process for PB.
USER RESEARCH - Meeting with some of out PB's, listen to their pain points and asking questions regarding their work flow and shipments routine.
DATA - Gathering all the numbers regarding the behavior of PB, comparing their conversions during the different years, looking into the numbers of shipments, goods and lanes they ship.
[ A visit to Maine furniture's headquartes, one of o the PB ]
UX
After meeting with our PB and with the stake holders I went to the drawing board creating an intake the admin will be able to fill easily. The intake is stored in the buyer's account and by by one click prices can be generated to all lanes at once.
I created a simple intake form that contains all the required details as was discussed with the stakeholders. In short, there are three options for the buyer to choose from:
• A lane with one origin to one destination
• A lane with multiple origins
• A lane with multiple destinations
The buyer can also add details regarding the shipment details such as load type, commodities and more. The buyer can add as many lanes as he need and once form is submitted the lanes are generated to his account and can see the prices from there.
Creating the wire frames for the intake
[ Admin's intake wire frame - more wire frames of the entire flow at the bottom of the page ]
User selects origin type from the menu
User selects the best shipping offer
User fills out the shipment form
Once the full intake flow was done, the next step was to create the wire frames for the rates page, the page which is the outcome after filling the intake where the admin and customer can go over the price offers together.
User clicks to select origin type
Creating the wire frames for the rates page
[ The rates page wireframe ]
Once intake is filled, the admin and buyer can go to the user's account and see the rates for the different lanes and discuss which shipper to use for the shipment. The decision can be based on the price of course, but also can be based on other parameters, such as transit time or statistics regarding this lane.
User clicks to select origin type
UI
Creating the intake
Once I got feedback from all stake holders and team, I created the final intake phase one, where the admin can enter all the customer's shipping lanes. The form is for internal usage of the admin and must be minimalist and easy to use while taking the lanes' information when speaking to the client on the phone
[ The intake's UI ]
The rates page
Similar to the intake, after the feedback I got we decided what to keep and what to save for a later stage (removing the reviews and the charts on the right from every lane for example) and to create the price offers by the different lanes where the admin can login into client's account and also the client can see it by clicking shipments on the right bar nav and discuss the pricing over phone.
[ The intake's UI ]
Want to see the entire UX flow? Rates page full UX process.pdf