A comprehensive redesign of the seller dashboard homepage to transform it from a basic information display into an actionable mission-control hub. The new design provides sellers with clear insights, streamlined workflows, and proactive guidance to optimize their performance on the Back Market platform.
The Challenge
The Seller BackOffice is Back Market’s portal for merchants to manage listings, orders, payments, and performance. In 2024, I led the redesign of its homepage, which had been underutilised and offered little actionable value. The goal was to turn it into a mission-control hub that surfaced key tasks, insights, and sustainability metrics, aligning with strategic priorities around competitiveness and circularity.
The Problems
Fragmentation
Sales and Trade-in were managed in separate back offices, creating inefficiency and confusion.
Lack of visibility
Key information such as orders, returns, revenue, and sustainability metrics was not surfaced, forcing sellers to rely on email updates.
Missed alignment
The homepage did not support business priorities to strengthen pricing competitiveness and circularity.
Because the homepage is the most visited entry point in the Seller BackOffice, these gaps limited its effectiveness as a tool for seller growth and operational efficiency.
Research & Discovery
Methods used
- Analytics: Revealed low engagement with the homepage, with sellers preferring to bookmark operational tabs.
- Workshops: Identified workflow inefficiencies and over-reliance on email for urgent updates.
- Stakeholder discussions: Guided the redesign to prioritize competitiveness and sustainability.
- Benchmarking: Against other marketplaces, it highlighted opportunities for better task visibility and insights delivery.
Key insights
- Low adoption: The homepage was not widely used and not considered valuable by sellers.
- Fragmentation: Disrupted workflows and obscured "circularity opportunities" due to separation between Sales and Trade-in.
- Email overload: Over 1 million monthly update emails caused "noise" and increased the risk of missed tasks.
- Pricing visibility: Pricing insights were not sufficiently visible, posing a risk to competitiveness.
- Hidden Trade-in: The "Trade-in" feature was hard to find in navigation and not integrated into the daily seller workflow.
Implication for design
The homepage needs to evolve from a simple landing screen into a "mission-control hub." This hub should consolidate tasks, surface opportunities, embed sustainability features, and align with Back Market's long-term vision of offering every seller actionable guidance, not just top accounts.
Design Process
Ideation
The redesign focused on rethinking the homepage as an operational hub. Key proposals included:
- Unified navigation → integrating Sales and Trade-in as primary items.
- Configurable widgets → modular blocks for orders, revenue, refunds, wallet balance, and sustainability metrics.
- Opportunities block → surfacing pricing and inventory insights to strengthen competitiveness.
- Sustainability integration → making Trade-in and avoided CO₂ part of the default homepage.
Wireframing explorations
Exploration & Iteration
- Wireframes and prototypes tested widget density, layout, and information hierarchy.
- Multiple structures were explored, including single-column, two-column, and task-first layouts.
- Notifications were refined into compact, expandable blocks for urgent actions.
- Navigation was redesigned so Trade-in was no longer buried in a drop-down.
- Competitor dashboards were used as benchmarks for clarity and usability.
Collaboration
- Worked with the product manager to balance immediate improvements with scalable long-term design.
- Partnered with engineers to develop a flexible widget system.
- Collaborated with content design to ensure clarity across widgets and notifications.
- Integrated sustainability features as core, aligning seller usability with business priorities.
Final Solution
The redesigned homepage shifted from a static landing page into a mission-control hub for sellers. It brought tasks, insights, and opportunities into one centralised space - reducing friction, improving competitiveness, and embedding sustainability into daily workflows.
Unified Navigation
Brought Sales and Trade-in together as primary navigation items, eliminating the need to dig through dropdowns to access core workflows.
Actionable Widgets
Configurable dashboard widgets for orders, revenue, refunds, wallet balance, and sustainability impact - all in one centralised view.
Growth Opportunities Block
Highlighting pricing and inventory insights to help sellers stay competitive and identify quick wins for boosting sales.
Notifications & To-Dos
Expandable blocks for urgent actions like orders to process, returns, and after-sales tasks - keeping sellers on top of their daily priorities.
Sustainability Integration
Surfacing Trade-in and CO₂ avoided as standard homepage elements, making environmental impact visible and actionable for every seller.
Outcome & Impact
The redesigned homepage delivered measurable improvements across seller workflows, business priorities, and sustainability positioning.
Seller Impact
- After launch, widgets became the primary entry point to deeper workflows, with 37% of seller sessions starting from a homepage widget click (orders, revenue, refunds, opportunities).
- Notifications reduced missed tasks, contributing to a 12% drop in support tickets related to order management.
- Feedback showed sellers valued the consolidated overview, though some still preferred jumping directly into bookmarked sections.
Business Impact
- Pricing and inventory insights nudged sellers toward more competitive listings. Adoption of pricing tools increased by 8%, a modest but positive trend in line with competitiveness goals.
- Consolidating Sales and Trade-in reduced confusion and simplified workflows, reflected in a 10% decrease in navigation-related support queries.
- Internally, the homepage was seen as a foundation for scaling seller guidance rather than a final solution.
For Sustainability
- Avoided CO₂ was surfaced on the homepage for the first time. While sellers did not actively cite it as a driver of behaviour, its inclusion strengthened Back Market's positioning as a circular marketplace and laid groundwork for future initiatives.
- Trade-in's visibility in navigation improved its awareness, though adoption shifts were limited at this early stage.
Feedback & Adoption
The project was received positively by sellers and stakeholders, with particular recognition for making the homepage more actionable and for laying a scalable foundation that connects user needs with business and sustainability priorities.
Reflection
The key challenge was balancing usability, competitiveness, and sustainability within one redesign. Earlier stakeholder alignment and stronger instrumentation would have strengthened the rollout, but the project proved that a homepage can be more than an entry point: it can be a strategic hub connecting seller needs with business goals while embedding sustainability by design.