The largest Polish public procurement platform needed a major UX update for their 15-year-old product

Marketplanet

Marketplanet is the biggest Polish public procurement platform. After 15 years of minor tweaks and updates, it needed a complete product redesign.

We managed to deliver the most user-friendly platform on the market. Since the new design was implemented, the platform received a lot of positive feedback and reclaimed the first place among the competition.

• Vastly improved customer experience,
• Significant sales growth,
• Establishing no. 1 position on the market.

Updating and futuring proofing an app’s UX

Because Marketplanet is a company that operates within the public sector, they had to organize a public tender to find the right partner for the job. We were one of many companies that made an offer. According to the client, we won thanks to our insight, experience, commitment, and rich portfolio.

The task at hand was difficult on a few levels. The biggest challenge was that the Marketplanet platform was, up to that moment, developed only by back-end devs. There was little to no input by any UX specialists for 15 years of its continuous development. Over the last few years, several companies developed similar products with more user-friendly interfaces. Given that, we had to build a truly future-proof UX.

Betting on a user friendly, usable interface

Our goal was clear: we needed to create a fast, easy-to-use interface, which would stand out from the competition and make the platform an easy first choice for clients. Research on similar apps gave us some ideas for improvement, but the real game changer was gathering feedback from actual users.

We spent many hours talking with hospital workers, school suppliers and local government officials, asking them about their experience with the app and their expectations for it. They helped us realize the gravity of the issue. Public procurement involves products like ventilators and face masks, so the interface had to be perfectly accessible and absolutely reliable.

Managing strict legal regulations and tight deadlines

Another tricky aspect of the process came from the very nature of the Marketplanet platform. Because it serves public sector entities, it needs to be in line with a very specific set of regulations. The challenge at the time was that some of the rules were being changed in the middle of our design process. As a result, we had to make several key adjustments right before the deadline.