Selling Cars Across Europe

A real market opportunity, a test of scale, and what it taught us about demand.

B2B woven into AutoScout24 over a map of Europe dotted with AutoProff pins: a listing's statistics with B2C and AutoProff B2B columns against the B2C competitor average, a panel of the dealer's B2B marketplace negotiations powered by AutoProff, and a Marketplaces menu with toggles for the consumer and dealer marketplaces.

Chapter 1. Context

One inventory, all of Europe

How could we use the scale of AutoScout24's Europe-wide inventory to supercharge our dealer-to-dealer offering, while helping dealers win along the way? I led design for a team of a PM, engineers, a researcher and a content designer to find out.

Chapter 2. The problem

Why dealers held back

With our UX researcher, I designed the research questions and interview guide, and conducted several of the interviews in Italy myself. We wanted to understand why dealers weren't using AutoProff, our dealer-to-dealer marketplace, for the same inventory they published on AutoScout24.

The findings were clear. B2B listings work differently, with their own pricing, more honest damage reporting and fewer images. They were also often less profitable than selling to consumers.

Workshop boards: each team member's top ideas on sticky notes, an impact and effort matrix sorting them, and clusters of opportunities such as B2B sourcing, professional search and a listing-level sourcing recommender. — Turning research into a prioritised list of opportunities.

Chapter 3. Design

Publish once, sell across borders

I then ran a workshop to turn our findings into a prioritised list of opportunities. Adding B2B-specific information to listings was easy to solve with little effort. And we knew that opening dealers' local inventory to a European audience through AutoProff could increase their profit margins, by making use of differences in demand across markets.

I designed a flow that publishes a dealer's existing AutoScout24 listings straight to AutoProff, so there's no second marketplace to manage. To fit how B2B works, we cut the number of mandatory images and added a dedicated B2B price field and an optional B2B description.

A banner on the dealer's AutoScout24 dashboard, powered by AutoProff: 'Two marketplaces, one solution: unlock more demand with the new dealer marketplace'. It says their active listings will be visible to dealers across Europe in 14 days at no extra cost, next to a map of Europe with a 'Publishing in 14 days' badge. — A heads-up on the dealer dashboard: listings go live on AutoProff in 14 days.

The dealer's inventory table on AutoScout24 with separate B2C and B2B price columns, and a Marketplaces menu open on a listing with toggles for Consumer Marketplace (B2C) and Dealer Marketplace (B2B). — The stock list, with B2C and B2B prices side by side and a Marketplaces menu to publish to either.

The Performance tab of a single listing, showing statistics in two columns, B2C and AutoProff B2B, compared against the B2C competitor average, with a standing time prediction. — B2B performance alongside B2C on every listing.

The Set rules for Dealer Marketplace (B2B) page, powered by AutoProff. On the left, dealers create an exclusion rule by make, mileage, first registration, price or condition. On the right, current rules such as Mercedes Benz from 150.000km, with a count of 25 of 100 listings excluded. — A rule builder lets dealers keep certain listings out of the automatic transfer.

The prototype: B2B woven through the tools dealers already use.

Chapter 4. Impact

Supply grew. Conversion stalled.

Supply grew quickly, with thousands of listings added to the marketplace from Germany and Italy. And while demand followed at a healthy rate, we hadn't accounted for dealers ignoring leads, which caused a conversion problem on the AutoProff platform.

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Chapter 5. What next

From scale to engagement.

With the supply side proven, the platform moved to opt-in and cleared out inactive dealers, focusing on those who wanted to trade. Seller response jumped the following week.