Amazon Switzerland does not exist. That is a true fun fact and one of the reasons why the Siroop AG—a joint venture of Swisscom (Switzerland’s largest telco provider) and COOP (Switzerland’s second largest supermarket chain)—approached us in early 2015 with some first rough prototypes at hand. Their ambition was to become the most relevant online marketplace of Switzerland. Since the initial launch in November 2015 with 50 merchants and 30,000 products in the marketplace, the number has grown up to 400 merchants and 600,000 products by June 2017. So far so good...

Amazon Switzerland does not exist. That is a true fun fact and one of the reasons why the Siroop AG—a joint venture of Swisscom (Switzerland’s largest telco provider) and COOP (Switzerland’s second largest supermarket chain)—approached us in early 2015 with some first rough prototypes at hand. Their ambition was to become the most relevant online marketplace of Switzerland. Since the initial launch in November 2015 with 50 merchants and 30,000 products in the marketplace, the number has grown up to 400 merchants and 600,000 products by June 2017. So far so good...

Compared to the Asian market, for instance, same day delivery is something rather new in Europe. As the cost of labour is pretty high, the logistics were quite a challenge from a business perspective. The integration of the complex logistics environment, that includes besides different delivery options also the access to roughly 100 pick-up stations that spread all over Switzerland, which enable customers to pick up their order themselves, was a challenge form a design point of view and an important phase of the process.

Compared to the Asian market, for instance, same day delivery is something rather new in Europe. As the cost of labour is pretty high, the logistics were quite a challenge from a business perspective. The integration of the complex logistics environment, that includes besides different delivery options also the access to roughly 100 pick-up stations that spread all over Switzerland, which enable customers to pick up their order themselves, was a challenge form a design point of view and an important phase of the process.

E-commerce & Local Merchants

E-commerce & Local Merchants

While customers are enjoying the convenience of online shopping, local merchants who don’t have their own online store are losing traction. The goal of Siroop was to become the first online marketplace in Switzerland which offers not only products from national and regional businesses but also local retailers. To achieve this goal, we needed to create a module which enables local merchants to set up easily their own online appearance within the platform. And by doing this, it will allow consumers to have access to a winery on the highest European vineyard or beef jerky specialities somewhere out of the Swiss backcountry.

While customers are enjoying the convenience of online shopping, local merchants who don’t have their own online store are losing traction. The goal of Siroop was to become the first online marketplace in Switzerland which offers not only products from national and regional businesses but also local retailers. To achieve this goal, we needed to create a module which enables local merchants to set up easily their own online appearance within the platform. And by doing this, it will allow consumers to have access to a winery on the highest European vineyard or beef jerky specialities somewhere out of the Swiss backcountry.

As a UX design lead for this project, I spent 6 months of tight and intense sprints between Berlin and Zurich evaluating weekly user testing sessions, creating prototypes, pushing concepts to convince the client and supervising design handovers to the third-party development vendor to ensure the correct implementation. For the time being, the Siroop online marketplace is one of my biggest project set-ups and it put me into the fortunate situation to work within a rewarding team to gain more leadership experience at that project scale—not to mention the e-commerce expertise of course. And thanks to my project counterpart Jacob Grubbe, which was responsible for the visual art direction, the platform got its unique visual language.

As a UX design lead for this project, I spent 6 months of tight and intense sprints between Berlin and Zurich evaluating weekly user testing sessions, creating prototypes, pushing concepts to convince the client and supervising design handovers to the third-party development vendor to ensure the correct implementation. For the time being, the Siroop online marketplace is one of my biggest project set-ups and it put me into the fortunate situation to work within a rewarding team to gain more leadership experience at that project scale—not to mention the e-commerce expertise of course. And thanks to my project counterpart Jacob Grubbe, which was responsible for the visual art direction, the platform got its unique visual language.

© 2020 Klaus R. Zimmermann. All rights reserved.

© 2020 Klaus R. Zimmermann.
All rights reserved.